Swine Country: How Feral Pigs Took Over the U.S.
All of which is to say: When one Arkansan last summer went viral by jumping into a Twitter debate about assault rifles and asking, essentially, But what do I do about feral hogs in my yard? he was posing a somewhat valid question, however ridiculous it may have seemed to the countless appalled commenters who jumped into the fray. Someday, though, they’ll understand, as this invasion is spreading. Wild pigs can live just about anywhere—in swamps and forests and brush, in climes warm and cold. Three decades ago they inhabited 20 U.S. states; that number has since doubled. And where they already were, now there are even more. Since the 1960s, California’s wild pig population, for example, has swelled from roughly 100 to some 300,000.
Texas, though, is something else: Feral hogs can be found in 253 of 254 counties. And given their prolific breeding, at least two-thirds of that population—upward of 1.7 million pigs—must be killed each year simply to keep the count level. Current efforts, however, are estimated to accomplish less than half of that culling.
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Nowhere did nature retaliate worse, though, than in Texas. Some farmers in the state have taken so many hits to high-value harvests, such as peanuts and corn, that they’ve shifted to lower-valued crops, like cotton, which pigs find less attractive. There are endangered toads whose breeding grounds are regularly ruined and sea turtles on the Gulf Coast whose eggs are gobbled up like popcorn. Cars routinely collide with massive hogs on Highway 130, outside Austin. More than 100 springs in the state are contaminated with swine-related E. coli. In 2014, one church outside Houston was so worried about its annual pumpkin sale that it enlisted armed guards to stand watch over the patch at night.
“In 1982 the USDA killed 86 feral hogs” in Texas, says Mike Bodenchuk, a San Antonio–based wildlife biologist. “Thirty years later we’re killing 30,000. We look at other states—Kansas, Missouri—and say, ‘You guys are where we were 30 years ago. You don’t wanna be where we are today.’ ”
RTWDT.
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