[audio:http://wamcradio.org/EarthWise/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/EW-03-21-12-Wild-Boars.mp3|titles=EW 03-21-12 Wild Boars]
Wild boars are a problem in more than twenty states. These invasive animals are prolific breeders with voracious appetites. They cause tremendous damage to crops and native plant communities and they spread diseases, such as pseudorabies, from feral hogs to domestic livestock.
Wild boars may even harm human health —there is good evidence that they may have been involved in the contaminated spinach from California farms that sickened so many people across the United States in 2006.
In some states, such as New York, hunting preserves are contributing to the spread of wild boars. Animals are released for trophy hunts, benefiting only a tiny population of hunters, while presenting serious risks to the public. Boars escape from private preserves and quickly establish in natural areas.
“People sometimes say, ‘well, couldn’t we just hunt them?’ There’s this phrase ‘we could barbecue or way out of the problem,” says David Strayer of the Cary Institute. “But there is now way that hunting can control wild pig populations in New York or elsewhere in the U.S. This is close to our last opportunity to control these populations in New York if we wish to do so.”
When new industrial development is proposed—such as drilling in the Marcellus shale—we try to ensure long-term costs to society don’t outweigh short-term benefits for the few. We don’t subject the movement of plants and animals to similar scrutiny, even though invasive species carry s serious price tag. Released for hunters, some pigs become feral, invasive species.
Just consider the multi-billion-dollar damages piling up from emerald ash borers, zebra mussels, and sudden oak death – to name a few. Attitudes need to change. And feral pigs need to go.
Photo, taken on July 4, 2008 using a Canon EOS 50D, courtesy of Craig O’Neal via Flickr.