ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. |
This site built and maintained by: GREANVILLE ASSOCIATESand CRESCENT COMMUNICATIONS •Rev. 12.1.05 Copyright ANIMAL PEOPLE, INC. 1992--2006
 |
 |
ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
|
MONTH: January/February 2007
Feral pigs become scapegoats—in the U.S. & around the world
SANTA BARBARA, California--
Pigs were blamed for people killing turkeys in the name of defending foxes
against eagles.
The Nature Conservancy ended 2006 by hiring
professional hunters to kill about 250 of the estimated 300 wild turkeys
on Santa Cruz Island, within Channel Islands National Park. Nature Conservancy
spokes-person Julie Benson told Associated Press that the killing was
needed to protect endangered Channel Islands foxes, after an 18-month,
$5 million pig purge, also touted as essential to protect the foxes, ended
earlier in the year.
"Scientists said the kills are necessary
because turkeys and pigs provide prey for golden eagles," summarized
Associated Press. "The eagles are attracted to the island, where
they also kill the endangered foxes. The island pigs kept the turkeys
in check by eating their eggs and competing with them for food. With nearly
all of the pigs gone, the turkey population boomed."
The problem actually started, retired
Channel Islands National Park superintendent Tim J. Setnicka admitted
in a March 2005 denunciation of "systematic biologic genocide"
published by the Santa Barbara News Press, when The Nature Conservancy
and National Park Service decided in 1972 to try to exterminate all non-native
species who inhabited the islands. The turkeys had just been introduced
that year.
"In the late 1980s," Setnicka
wrote, "seeing an island fox was a daily occurrence, easier than
seeing a pig on Santa Rosa Island."
Feasting on the carcasses of pigs, sheep,
goats, horses, burros, deer, and bison, shot by the thousands over more
than 25 years in the name of protecting biodiversity, the fox population
soared to a probable all-time high.
"But their numbers mysteriously declined,"
Setnicka recounted. "In the mid-1990s it was learned their decline
was due to an influx of golden eagles."
The golden eagles were almost certainly
drawn to the islands by the stench of the carrion that fed the foxes.
When the carrion ran out, they attacked the pigs and foxes.
"To help sell fox restoration, for
which we had no money, we came up with the media spin that one of the
main reasons golden eagles reside on park islands was because of pigs,"
Setnicka admitted. "This would help vilify the pigs and help support
the pig removal project."
With both pigs and turkeys now almost
hunted out, the Channel Islands fox population should explode, if The
Nature Conservancy and National Park Service analysis holds up. On the
other hand, they may find that the golden eagles now hunt foxes more than
ever, while the foxes have less food than ever, without the pig and turkey
carrion.
Pigs vs. spinach
On the California mainland, feral pigs
meanwhile took the rap for allegedly causing an outbreak of E. coli bacterial
poisoning that spread from a single contaminated spinach field to 26 states
and one Canadian province in August and September 2006. At least 204 people
fell ill, three of whom died, Kevin Reilly, M.D. of the California Department
of Health Services told Juliana Barbassa of Associated Press.
"Boar trampled fences that hemmed
in the spinach field," Barbassa wrote. "Samples taken from a
wild pig, as well as from stream water and cattle on the ranch, tested
positive for the same strain of E. coli implicated in the outbreak. The
pigs could have tracked the bacteria into the field or spread it through
their droppings, Reilly said."
The E. coli outbreak "may hurt farm
programs aimed at restoring wildlife habitat and cutting water pollution,"
San Francisco Chronicle environment writer Glen Martin warned. "Such
environmental programs could be at odds with 'clean farming techniques'
promoted by food processors. Those techniques encourage growers to remove
grassy areas that are planted to reduce erosion and trap pesticides before
they reach waterways. The practices also discourage habitat zones that
might attract animals who carry bacteria like E. coli or salmonella."
Added Martin, "A Salinas Valley grower
who requested anonymity because of contract negotiations with processors
said that even if processors allow some wildlife habitat near cropland,
they now require farmers to put out large quantities of poisoned bait
to kill rodents. 'When we plant hedgerows now, we have to use the bait
stations or we lose our contracts,' he said. 'Later, you see birds of
prey perched over the bait. They eat mice sluggish from the poison and
get poisoned themselves. It kind of defeats the whole purpose of putting
in the habitat.'"
But, Martin noted, "Preliminary research
indicates concerns about wildlife as vectors for pathogens may be misdirected.
An analysis from U.C. Santa Cruz concludes that the strain of bacterium
associated with the spinach poisonings--E. coli 0157:H7--is rare in wild
birds and mammals," including feral pigs, "and resides most
abundantly in the digestive tracts of grain-fed cattle."
Whether or not feral pigs really are to
blame for everything they are accused of, they are increasingly abundant
and widely distributed--and their rooting makes messes.
Pigs dig the forest
"Hogs are devastating to habitat,
devastating to groundnesting birds," recently fumed Ohio Wildlife
Division program administrator of wildlife management and research Carolyn
Caldwell, to Dave Golowenski of the Columbus Dispatch. "They eat
amphibians, from frogs to salamanders. They do lots of rooting, and they
eat everything they root up."
This is not necessarily problematic at
all, from an ecological perspective. Pigs and other pig-like mammals have
evolved together with forests since before the time of the dinosaurs.
Feral pigs in North America today may compete for food and habitat with
species as different as skunks, raccoons, opossums, javelinas, black bears,
deer, and badgers, but despite some overlapping tastes and traits, pigs
are no threat to displace any of them. Feral pigs are also part of the
prey base for bears, pumas, wolves, and alligators.
Overall, feral pigs fit easily into the
North American wildlife ecology. But they do not fit neatly into management
schemes that never took them into account. Yet they may now be seen as
bonus targets to help keep dwindling numbers of hunters in the field,
and perhaps to attract new hunters from among immigrants whose old-country
cultures included pig hunting.
Many states actively pushed pig hunting
in fall 2006, usually for the first time.
"Boars have been subject to hunting
for years, but they have now become such a problem that the state is encouraging
hunters to shoot them," Golowenski of the Dispatch noted. "Ohio
Division of Wildlife officials want them gone."
"The Michigan Department of Agriculture
and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources have given permission
to licensed hunters to fire at will at feral pigs in 23 Michigan counties
where the swine have been spotted," wrote Tom Greenwood of the Detroit
News. "While the pigs are not a serious threat in Michigan,"
Greenwood admitted, "they have caused huge damage to crops, wildlife
and the ecosystems in a number of states, especially Florida and Texas."
Or so Jacqui Goddard reported on November
26 for the London Sunday Telegraph.
"Wild pigs are tearing up Texas in
unprecedented numbers," wrote Goddard, "menacing its residents,
killing livestock, and gorging on crops. At least 20 other states have
also reported problems," Goddard said, "because of the creatures'
big appetites and bad manners. Across the country, damage to agriculture
is estimated to be as high as $800 million a year."
That might sound like a lot--until compared
to the environmental costs of, for example, the $80 billion a year cattle
and hog feedlot industry.
de Soto
In truth, proliferating feral pigs are
for the most part themselves an environmental consequence of pork production.
"Scientists say that the blame lies
partly with the 16th-century Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, who landed
in Florida in 1539 with 600 troops and a herd of swine. The animals, which
were bred as food, have spread across the Southeastern states," Goddard
asserted.
De Soto probably was the first pig farmer
whose escaped stock contributed to the present population, but more than
450 years of pig farming elsewhere in North America contributed to the
gene pool.
Pigs wandered alongside wagons wherever
European settlers went. Though most were slaughtered, and most who escaped
were quickly hunted down, enough got away that by the mid-20th century
there were feral pigs in most states south of the snow belt.
Yet feral pigs did not proliferate at
anything like the recent pace until the advent of factory farming and
long-haul trucking to move pigs to market. Even when pig predators and
food rivals including acorn-eating deer had been hunted into extreme scarcity
in the mid-20th century, feral pigs did not approach their present abundance.
Scavenging competition from much larger
numbers of free-roaming dogs helped to control urban pig numbers. But
what kept pigs from going "hog-wild" in the boondocks?
Pig economics
The answer may be simple economics. But
the economic factors require more than just a quick look.
USDA data shows that the numbers of pigs on U.S. farms at any given time
now is not significantly different from the numbers on farms in 1900:
50-odd million then, 50-odd million now.
There were actually more pigs on farms
in 1940: just over 61 million. However, since 1940 the total number of
farms has dropped by two-thirds, the farm labor force has dropped by more
than 80%, and total number of pigs slaughtered has almost doubled, because
the average time taken to raise a pig to slaughter weight has been cut
in half.
In addition, in inflation-adjusted dollars,
a pig now sells for a third less than in 1940. As the value of each pig
has fallen, the number of workers available to try to recover each escaped
pig has plummeted, and the number of pigs in transit at any given time
has soared.
With more pigs on the road at all times,
hauled in much larger trailers than a generation ago, the opportunities
for pigs to get loose and introduce themselves to new habitat have never
been greater.
Pig trucking
Trucking accidents from which pigs might
escape occur at a reported rate of about 60 per year, involving as many
as 10,000 pigs altogether, according to data included in U.S. Highway
Accidents Involving Farm Animals, a compilation taken from news reports,
published by Farm Sanctuary in June 2006.
But most pig-hauling accidents don't make
news, Richmond Times-Dispatch staff writer Bill Geroux discovered in April
2005, while investigating an incident in which about 180 pigs spilled
from a toppled trailer.
"The confused animals rooted in the
grass or scrambled into nearby woods," Giroux reported. "Some
of them lay squealing in the wreck. One hog set off down the narrow two-lane
blacktop, where morning commuter traffic came to a halt. About 30 hogs
lay down for a nap in the sunshine between two houses.
"Every day," Giroux continued,
"dozens of trucks packed with 150 or more hogs converge on Smithfield's
two large slaughterhouses from hog farms in Southside Virginia and North
Carolina. And every year, a few of those trucks plunge off the rural highways
near the plants."
Said Smithfield spokesperson Jerry Hostetter,
"I hate to admit it, but it happens all the time."
"As Smithfield's production has grown," Giroux recounted, "the
company has established a rapid-response team to recapture hogs."
Most pigs who escape from wrecked trucks
are soon caught. Most of the pigs aboard the trucks have little or no
experience of freedom, and no idea how to feed themselves as wild animals.
Still, if even 3.5% of all the pigs involved
in documented transport accidents get away and survive long enough to
raise litters, their net contribution to the feral population would be
the equivalent of de Soto's pigs escaping to breed each and every year.
More important than the number, however,
is the breadth of distribution. De Soto's pigs could only expand into
habitat adjacent to the habitat they already occupied. Until the advent
of transporting pigs by railway, in the late 19th century, there was no
faster way than walking for a pig to colonize new territory. Natural boundaries
such as waterways and high mountains were rarely breached.
Even in the railway era, large numbers
of pigs were moved only along a handful of routes. Pigs were raised mainly
in the South and the grainbelt states, close to food sources.
Today, pigs by the tens of thousands are
raised in confinement barns in the Dakota badlands and the Rocky Mountains.
Pigs are trucked throughout most of the continental U.S., across all former
barriers to pig travel.
As accidents occur more or less randomly,
the result is a continent-wide experiment in releasing a few pigs here
and a few there. The optimum feral pig habitats are being found and populated,
if only by chance. Instead of feral pig populations marching predictably
from one regional stronghold to the next, they are capturing territory
like paratroopers who secure wherever they land.
Adaptation
But if feral pigs are all descended from
factory-farmed pigs, why do they look like European wild boars? And how
are they reproducing, when most factory-farmed males are castrated?
Indeed, most factory-farmed male pigs
could not contribute to a growing feral population--but domestic pigs
readily hybrid-ize with European boars, now abundant on hunting ranches
and also inclined to escape occasionally. Common domestic pigs also hybridize
with Arkansas razorbacks, existing feral pig populations, and even with
dumped or escaped ex-pet Vietnamese potbellied pigs.
Among the many different pig strains at
large now, feral pigs are also conducting a vast uncontrolled experiment
in adaptation to North American habitat. Over time, the result may be
regionally distinct feral pig varieties.
For the moment, European boar characteristics
seem to be dominant. This is no surprise. Hunting ranch operators learned
more than 30 years ago that hybridizing imported European boar stock with
common domestic pigs would produce animals of European boar appearance
but domestic pig temperament.
Further, most common domestic pigs are
slaughtered so young that people who are not pig experts seldom realize
how much they will resemble their European boar ancestors if allowed to
reach maturity.
The combination of the appearance of a
traditional trophy species with the familiar flavor of pork has created
a growing commercial pig hunting industry in Texas, whose feral pig population
officially exceeds two million.
"In Texas, most land is privately
owned," explained Goddard of the Daily Telegraph, "so there
are no state eradication programs, and farmers are free to take matters
into their own hands. This allows them to run hunts and sell the meat,
to make back some of the profits the animals have cost them."
"Hogs are putting farmers out of business," Texas pig trapper
Kevin Ryer told Goddard, "but at the same time hog hunting has turned
into a big business."
There is not actually much sign of feral
pigs putting farmers out of business, in Texas or anywhere else, but New
York Times reporter Tim Eaton a month earlier observed that pig hunting
has "become lucrative, as Europeans and an increasing number of Americans
clamor for wild boar."
Eaton followed a hunter who "said
he made $28,000 last year selling live feral hogs." Eaton described
how the hunter released four scent hounds who located and cornered a feral
pig. The hunter then released a pit bull terrier, who captured the pig
with a face bite. The hunter "pounced on the snorting beast and tied
his feet together." The hunter then tossed the pig into the back
of his vehicle.
"It is ironic that the wild hog market
is growing with the organic market, as many people turn toward organic
meat to avoid supporting the cruelty of factory farming," commented
Karen Dawn of DawnWatch. "Indeed wild hunted animals, at least those
few lucky enough to die from a clean shot, suffer incomparably less than
those raised in tiny cages and trucked in unconscionable conditions to
under-regulated slaughterhouses. But hunted hogs suffer horribly for hunters'
fun."
Alien invaders
Elsewhere, even in Hawaii, where pigs
have traditionally been hunted, they continue to be demonized by officials
who would like more hunters to kill them, and some journalists who uncritically
report what they hear.
"Stealthy and sometimes nearly invisible,
unwelcome species such as hybrid Polynesian pigs" are "pillaging
native forests, screeching through the night in suburban neighborhoods
and rooting around in rural taro patches," recently asserted Associated
Press writer Tara Godvin.
"I think semantics plays a big role
in this. The term 'invasive species' makes one think that the hordes are
at our gates and threatening to destroy life as we know it," responded
Animal Rights Hawaii director Cathy Goeggel.
In Florida, where de Soto released the
first pigs to reach North America, an off-duty state Fish & Wildlife
officer and several of his hunting buddies in October 2006 apparently
fancied themselves to be holding off an alien menace when they reportedly
massacred several dozen Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs.
According to Richard Hoyle of the Coalition
of Pig Sanctuaries, about 70 pot-bellied pigs were either released or
escaped from the Barberville property of David Mowerly, whose wife bred
pot-bellied pigs. Mowerly and his wife were in the process of divorce.
"The domesticated pets had been in
the area for months," reported Channel 9 Eye-witness News. "Recently
four pigs were found dead with their throats cut along a local road, and
that's when some residents had enough."
Members of the Fort Myers-based Pigs as
Pets Association, led by founder Lana Hollenbeck, captured 39 pigs and
piglets, but the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission authorized hunters
to kill the remainder.
At dusk on October 20, 2006, Hoyle said,
"hunters with bows and guns began arriving and the slaughter began.
Many terrified little pigs were killed on the roadside. Others were baited
with corn and shot when they came to eat. The hunters even attempted to
shoot pigs who had been captured and penned while awaiting rescue,"
Hoyle alleged.
"At least 15-20 pigs have been killed
so far and at least 10 are thought to be wounded but still alive in the
area," Hoyle said on October 22. "Many of these wounded pigs
have been savaged by local dogs or have had their throats cut and were
left on the side of the road to die," Hoyle added.
Following the Channel 9 coverage, "There
has been a lot of back-peddling on the part of animal control and the
Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission," Rooterville pig sanctuary
founder Elaine West told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "They had maintained that
these semi-tame little pigs were feral. Anyone who has ever seen a feral
pig would realize that these were not ferals," West contended.
Now that they have been taught to fear
humans, however, any who were not either killed or rescued may augment
the Florida feral pig population. Smaller feral pigs may be able to compete
with armadillos for more limited habitat niches than the purported descendants
of de Soto's pigs require.
"We will probably end up with about 4-5 times as many animals to
deal with than they started out with," West predicted.
--Merritt Clifton