Home Locator: Website designed to get a better view of wild pig problem

Published 10:26 pm Saturday, December 1, 2018

Some things, like taxes, construction on Interstate 35, allergies and wild pigs, are seemingly never going to go away. At least not easily.

Like taxes, the wild pig problem continues to grow in Texas with no letup in sight.

“The movement and release of wild pigs in past times was akin to shooting ourselves in both feet,” said Jim Cathey, associate director of the Texas A&M University Natural Resources Institute. “The practice of having free-ranging pigs in the early history of Texas gave pigs a toehold anywhere Texans settled and thus a first target, but the wide-scale transportation and release of pigs in modern times, squarely lined up the second foot in the cross-hairs.”

Wild pigs arrived in the United States with explorers in the 1500s from Europe. It was not until the late 20th century, when the pigs were scattered around the state by landowners and hunters seeking a new target, that they became a statewide problem. They have done well because 79 percent of the state is considered suitable habitat for the pigs. But even where the habitat is not considered pig country, they are adapting.

“This past year provided me a little lesson in how adaptable wild pigs can be to range conditions in our state. I knew that wild pigs were in far west Texas, but to see them in the Chihuahuan Desert near Terlingua was surprising. We have our hands full with an animal that seems to do well north to south and east to west, and copes with cold and heat or plentiful rainfall or very little,” Cathey explained.

Any attempt to put an estimate on the number of wild pigs is an exercise in guessing, but a 2012 population model by the NRI put the number at somewhere between 1.8 million and 3.4 million. Today Cathey expects the number to be higher.

To help get a better handle on the number of wild pigs and where they exist in Texas, the Institute has begun an online register.

“For many years, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service has worked through county extension agents to bring programming that frames the problem Texans face when dealing with wild pigs. After our programs on biology, wild pig reduction techniques, and law everyone would have a ‘pig story’ to tell and the number of pigs taken grew over time. The wild pig reporting tool on our new Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute’s NRI Wild Pigs website (https://wildpigs.nri.tamu.edu) serves as a way to capture and document the reports given to us by individuals. Now, rather than stories being told and forgotten, the reporting tool captures the information in a database and this information can be used to really understand the breadth of the wild pig problem across Texas,” Cathey said.

The survey (available at https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/c5c86bf1ae4341ff97a15b6d946bda61) is simple to fill out, with questions on location, numbers of juvenile and adult pigs spotted, types of damage and a way to upload a picture of the damage.

Almost a decade ago, it was estimated that wild pigs do $52 million in agriculture damage alone each year.

“Food and fiber meant for markets and our people have wound up in the bodies of wild pigs. This does not count damage to suburban yards and landscapes or collisions with motor vehicles,” Cathey said.

The problems created by wild pigs go even deeper and are as varied across the state as Texas itself.

“Trying to a determine the area with the worst wild pig problem, is like finding yourself standing barefooted in a huge prickly pear patch. No matter where you look, you have a problem and a tough time getting out of it,” Cathey said.

Where their numbers are high, wild pig herds are being linked to E. coli presence in streams and rivers. Wet habitat, including backwaters, are where they spend time wallowing and eventually can put bacteria into the water by defecating either directly into the water or by it being pushed into the water by rainfall runoff.

Wallowing and rooting for food can also increase sedimentation in waterways causing secondary pollution.

The wild pigs are also negatively impacting the state’s wildlife.

“Years ago, my Texas A&M University wildlife interns did an exercise using weight equivalents to determine what wildlife we could have had that is instead tied up in a 200-pound pig standing on the hoof. This did not include all the resources it took to grow a 200-pound pig, or maintain it, just the weight. We could have had 582 bobwhite quail, or 610 mourning dove, or four javelina, or 14 Rio Grande wild turkey, or 1,455 Texas horned lizards, among many other animals. Wild pigs are robbing us of natural resources,” Cathey said.

Looking at what is happening in Texas, states with smaller pig populations can be more proactive by outlawing the importation of the animals and aggressively attacking any population that is found.

Because of their numbers and the state’s size, Texas does not have that option. Even aggressive attempts to control pig populations only create temporary relief before populations build back up.

“Currently, with all the effort to remove wild pigs, we have not hit the tipping point to drive the population backwards. An estimate for the wild pig harvest in 2010 was 753,646, or 29 percent, of the estimated feral hog population in Texas at that time. To stem growth, we need to remove 66 percent of the population over many years,” Cathey noted.

Hunting and trapping at current levels can only do so much. Research continues on bait that is fatal to the wild pigs, but not other forms of wildlife and domestic livestock.

If nothing else, the NRI mapping site might help urban residents and politicians get a better understanding of the problem.

“It is one thing to tell people about a problem, but to see it mapped out through the reports coming into the new website creates a picture of a larger problem affecting rural and urban Texans. Perhaps the reporting tool will help explain, why we cannot afford to have wild pig populations grow any further,” Cathey said.