Feral Hogs Represent An Immediate Threat to Peyote
As if this species didn't already have enough threats facing it, now Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) can add feral hogs to the list of immediate threats to its existence. It seems the threat from hogs is much more extensive than thought.
Peyote, of course, is sacred to Native Americans who use it as a religious sacrament during all-night teepee ceremonies. It has been an important part of resisting the effects of colonization and genocide for indigenous people in North America, but it is curr facing some pretty severe threats, the most of which seems to be land clearance and an innate societal disrespect for the kind of habitat that Peyote grows in in South Texas: Tamaulipan Thornscrub.
When licensed Peyote dealers known as "Peyoteros" harvest Peyote, they merely cut it above its underground stem, leaving the stem intact so that dormant buds can re-sprout new "heads" (stems). When feral pigs eat Peyote, exploiting its water stores but apparently unbothered by the bitter alkaloids, they dig up the plants and leave them half-eaten to die slowly on the soil surface. The pigs also damage Peyote's nurse plants like Guajillo (Senegalia berlandieri) by chewing on the roots, causing it to die. These nurse plants are of immense importance not just to Peyote but to the entire ecosystem, since they mitigate the effects of the brutal summer heat and dry season, while also fixing nitrogen through their roots and making it available to other plants in the soil. Remove the nurse plants, and many of the cacti in this habitat will not have the shade necessary to make it through the summer.
What's really tragic to think about is the effects feral hogs will have on the long-term health of the habitat here. I'm hopeful we can eventually use PigBrig corral traps to get our problem under control, but what about the hundreds of other properties where habitat is being destroyed but the landowners are not paying attention and don't even care? This is how a species slowly gets wiped out from an area, which is something I've seen happen firsthand with other cactus species in South Texas. Suddenly, they're just not there anymore, and few seem to notice or remember.
