I thought some here might find this of of interest.

-Bob F.


HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Houston & Texas

March 21, 2006, 9:12AM

Four-legged soil tillers
The fast-reproducing feral hog is bringing its destructive behavior to populated areas
By BILL MURPHY
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

The soccer facilities at George Bush Park in west Harris County are a coach's dream: two complexes with dozens of well-maintained fields and lights for night practices and games.

Some mornings, however, the normally pristine fields look like they've been worked over by an unhinged farmer gone berserk with his plow. The culprits: feral hogs that dig up grass in search of insects, larvae, roots and other delectables.

"We've had soccer fields completely wiped out by the pigs," said Mike McMahan, a Parks Department manager in county Precinct 3. "It is a problem that will get worse as time goes on. We have no way of stopping them. We can only try to control them."

It's not just George Bush Park, and it's not just soccer fields. Across Texas, feral hogs have become a maddening and destructive presence. With 1.5 million to 2 million swine roaming all but about 20 of its 254 counties, Texas has the nation's largest feral hog population.

In 1990, only 19 states — mainly in the Southeast — had feral hogs, and the nationwide population was 1 million to 2 million, said John Mayer, co-author of Wild Pigs in the United States. By 2004, hogs were in 35 states and numbered 4 million to 5 million.

"If you don't have them now, get ready — they're coming," said Mark Mapston, a district supervisor with Texas Wildlife Services and author of the booklet Feral Hogs in Texas.

Golf courses, wetlands
Locally, wild hogs ruin fairways and greens at suburban golf courses, pose a threat to costly wetlands created by Harris County to offset new development, and are so common in some areas that motorists occasionally hit them at night.

"It's like hitting an oak log," said Richard Long, who oversees parks operations at Barker and Addicks reservoirs for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Residential neighborhoods are not immune. Alex Becerra dreads the prospect of hogs returning to his Clear Lake subdivision.

They've been gone for about 18 months, but Becerra said his front lawn was a regular dining spot for several years. Groups — called sounders — rooted up his yard about 40 times, forcing him to spend thousands of dollars on landscaping, he said.

The hogs stopped coming after Becerra installed an electric fence and motion-activated floodlights. Nearby companies built fences along their paths and hired a service that used dogs to corner and herd hogs.

The hogs' numbers have increased sharply in the past 20 years as ranchers seeking another animal to hunt released hogs on their property, said Rick Taylor, wildlife biologist with the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department.

They can adapt and thrive in nearly any climate except extremely arid zones. Often with 1- to 4-inch tusks, they average 75 to 150 pounds. Some may weigh more than 300 pounds.

And they are prolific. A sow can have two litters a year, with four to eight pigs per litter. With virtually no natural predators, their numbers can grow rapidly.

At Greens Bayou Wetlands Mitigation Bank in northeast Harris County, officials agree that population control is in order.

Many plants uprooted
The county Flood Control District has spent $7.7 million to create the 1,450-acre site, where wetlands are created to replace those destroyed by flood control projects and other private and public development. The district sells credits in the created wetlands to developers for about $20,000 an acre.

Feral hogs are uprooting so many plants in seeking food that they are endangering some of those wetlands. As a result, the Corps of Engineers, which helps monitor the mitigation bank, may downgrade some of the newly created wetlands.

The Flood Control District will bring a plan for reducing the mitigation bank's hog totals before Commissioners Court in the coming months, said Glenn Laird, the district's manager of environmental services.

Shooting the hogs might be the easiest solution, but the county doesn't allow firearms on its property, he said. Trapping may be the only legal alternative.

In west Harris County, Barker Dam holds back floodwaters along Buffalo Bayou during heavy rains. But hogs sometimes root up portions of the earthen dam.

Keith McBee, who has been hired several times to bring in his dogs and remove or kill hogs at a county park in Humble, said he can't always shoot a hog when homes are nearby. He carries a backup weapon: a knife.

"All you've got to do is jump in there and start stabbing," he said. "It's pretty Western, I'll tell you."

With the hogs causing an estimated $52 million in agricultural damage in Texas annually, ranchers and farmers have become especially vocal in demanding solutions. In response, Texas Wildlife Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services have taken steps, killing more than 11,000 hogs statewide last year, said Randy Smith, staff biologist with the federal agency in San Antonio.

Bounty in East Texas
Hogs were causing such havoc in Van Zandt County in East Texas two years ago that officials offered a $7 bounty for a matched set of ears. More than 2,000 sets were turned in before the program was discontinued.

The Texas Department of Agriculture recently awarded Texas A&M and Texas Tech universities $500,000 in grants to better estimate the damage caused by feral hogs and develop ways to thin their numbers.

For now, people in some areas may have to accept having hogs around. "They are coming into suburban areas as we build further out into wildlife habitat,"said Billy Higginbotham, a professor overseeing Texas A&M's part of the grant. "We're not going to eradicate feral hogs. But we can develop strategies to reduce their damages."

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