Texas has the biggest feral hog population in the United States. It started as another grazing mouth on our landscape, but now it’s overpopulated and causing a problem for agricultural life.
“Pigs compete with native wildlife for forage,” Mike Bodenchuk, former state director of the Texas Wildlife Services Program, said. “They alter habitats, they foul the water sources. They predate on a lot of wildlife as well. Reptiles, ground-nesting birds, even fawns from deer can fall victim to feral hogs.”
And it’s not just agriculture and the ecosystem that the wild pigs impact. It’s causing issues for our farmers as well.
“I travel around the state to district meetings, county meetings… to discuss the issues that our members are facing,” President of the Texas Farm Bureau, Russell Boening, said. “And there is one topic that is pretty much universal when you talk about issues facing farmers and ranchers and that's feral hogs.”
How has Texas tried to solve this dilemma? Governmental programs are trying to control the population. There are also business owners like Edward Dickey who own services to capture the feral hogs.
“The way the traps work is that they’re larger,” said Dickey. “They're made up of 12, eight-foot wide metal panels. But at the bottom of them, the holes are smaller so that the piglets can slip through.”
For more, listen to this week's episode of Texas Wants to Know. New episodes are released every Thursday in the Audacy app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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