Nature run amuck: Feral pig population explosion continues across U.S.

June 2, 2011 – SAN DIEGO, CA – When it comes to controlling the spread of feral pigs in San Diego County, the public hunting effort isn’t doing the job. That has led federal agencies to launch an ambitious program that will use cage traps, corral traps, federal hunters with guns and dogs and even shooting from helicopters to exterminate the area’s population of wild swine. Officials see the pigs as a threat to fragile ecosystems and public health and safety. Environmentalists worry about the damage wild pigs will do to the county’s sensitive habitat, much of it rebounding from Southern California’s catastrophic wildfires of the last decade. The U.S. Forest Service estimates there are 200 to 300 feral pigs in San Diego County. There’s also a small sounder of pigs near the Riverside County border that likely was there prior to the release of pigs in late 2006 on the Capitan Grande Indian Reservation behind El Capitan Reservoir in the San Diego River bed. Hunters who spend a lot of time in the backcountry say the population is three to four times that now and it will be useless to try and eradicate them. Still, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are developing a plan to eliminate as many feral pigs as possible, as soon as possible. “Our focus has to be what we can do at this point to control the effect they are having now,” said Joan Friedlander, supervising ranger of the Palomar District of the Cleveland National Forest. “But it also has to be about controlling the population, keeping it low and at a threshold so it’s not growing exponentially and beyond what we can handle. –Sign on San Diego            See: Texas