Steve Knight

By STEVE KNIGHT
Outdoor Editor

It would seem to be conflicting goals.

While the Texas AgriLife Extension Service and its partners are working to control wild pig numbers, the Texas Animal Health Commission is considering a regulation that would tighten restrictions on the animals, but would also allow landowners an ability to release them.

Chalk it up to a difference in priorities.

The Texas Legislature gave TAHC regulatory authority over wild pigs in regard to disease control. That includes oversight for holding facilities, sale, exhibition, hunting or movement.

The agency held meetings with interested parties, including those that operate hog-hunting operations. The result is a proposal that allows landowners and trappers to continue to market trapped wild pigs. However, wild boars and neutered boars, called barrows, could also be released on sanctioned hunting preserves. Along with mandatory record-keeping, the pigs would have to be maintained inside a fence that is defined as swine-proof.

In a nod to the hunting operations, which in some cases are getting upward of $300 a day for a hog hunt; this is a departure from current rules. Presently, only wild pigs that have been quarantined and shown negative to a test for brucellosis and pseudo rabies for 30 days prior to movement may be released.

Allowing the wild pigs to be taken to market sets a positive note in the campaign to control the estimated 2 million in Texas. The plan to allow a release brings about some concerns starting with the so-called swine proof fence.

“Given the level of agricultural damage feral swine cause in this state, I have concerns over any hog — male, female or neutered — that once captured could be placed in an environment where it may be able to become free-ranging again and could cause additional damage if it escapes,” said Dr. Billy Higginbotham, Texas AgriLife Extension Service wildlife specialist, and one of the state’s wild pig experts.

The Extension Service estimates wild pigs cause more than $50 million a year in damage to agriculture operations in Texas. Recognizing that the gate is already open as far as eliminating the pigs, the extension service and other government agencies are just now coming out of a multi-million dollar, two-year legislative mandated study looking at controlling the animals. The study looked at everything from hunting to trapping; shooting from helicopters and birth control.

Despite the current restrictions on releasing pigs, it continues either through ignorance of the law or abuse. TAHC recognizes that and through the record-keeping process hopes to get a handle on the industry. According to the agency, required record-keeping would include the number of swine released or removed from a location, identification of individual animals and the location they were trapped or released.

They could only be released on preserves operated under a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department “Hunting Lease License.”

“It is extremely important that proposed holding facilities and hunting preserves be escape proof. Identification on the boars and barrows in hunting preserves would help us identify pigs that get loose,” said Dr. Dee Ellis, Texas’ assistant state veterinarian and TAHC adviser to the feral swine working group.

The Extension Service’s Higginbotham questions the ability to build or enforce a hog-proof fence.

“In East Texas particularly, making any enclosure ‘deer proof or hog proof’ will be a challenge given the number of creek drainages that routinely flood and tree blowdowns that routinely occur breaching fences,” he said. “Fortunately, it will be in the hunting preserves’ best interest to be vigilant and conduct routine fence inspections in order to protect their investment. In addition, the proposed regulation limits the stocking of hogs into these ‘approved facilities’ to boars and barrows, which is good.”

Higginbotham also notes the regulation doesn’t mention whether the facilities need to be pig free to begin or whether the newcomers can just be added.

“However, it is unclear to me if these newly approved facilities must be ‘hog free’ (no females present) before they are given approved status, making them strictly ‘put and take operations’. If so, the potential for reproduction will be reduced without the female segment of the population present — or if escapes do occur, it will be limited to the segment of the herd that contributes the least to population growth,” he noted.

Higginbotham does agree that the rules should make releases more public, something that should help reduce livestock diseases.

TAHC’s Ellis said that tests over a four-year period have shown that around 20 percent of wild pigs in Texas carry pseudo rabies, a flu-like swine disease not related to rabies. About 10 percent have swine brucellosis. Since 2006, the swine form of brucellosis has been detected in 26 cattle in 19 herds around the state. While this doesn’t impact the state’s cattle brucellosis “free” status, it can slow the sale of cattle testing positive until cultures can be grown and the type of brucellosis is determined.

The fear remains, that at some point, swine brucellosis will spread from the state’s wild pig population into domestic pigs.

The efforts of TAHC to control disease while not impacting commercial hunting is commendable. And it isn’t the agency’s charge to wander off into the squabble over put-and-take hunting operations, which is exactly what the release creates.

However, it could help protect the side of agriculture in the state that is feeling an economic impact, while reaching its other goals by simply requiring the release of barrows only. This would allow continued hunting and the paperwork sought while guaranteeing that any animal that did escape, did not in any way lead to an increased population. It would be a win-win-win.

TAHC released its full proposal June 6 and will accept comment through July 6. For more information on the proposal, see TAHC’s Web site at http://www.tahc.state.tx.us or call TAHC at 800-550-8242, ext. 710.

———

Contact Outdoor Editor Steve Knight at 903-596-6277 or by e-mail at outdoor@tylerpaper.com

Steve Knight
()