13 ms·

Feral pig populations have grown to unmanageable numbers

96 points by DLay 6y ago

phkahler 6y ago
>> The province of Ontario has an emerging population of a few hundred pigs, and it’s educating the public, collecting data, and testing how to track and remove swine. Just tell the hunters you have a problem and invite them in to eradicate them. I feel like government bodies whose job is to deal with such things never want to "solve" a problem completely, but would rather "manage" it so they can keep their job. Some day these few hundred pigs will be 10's of thousands or more and they'll look back and wonder why they didn't put more effort in sooner.
- DFHippie 6y ago
  As it says in the article, there are problems with hunting: pigs are smart and become nocturnal to avoid hunters, making them more difficult to track; also because they are smart, pigs start traveling when they find they are being hunted and sounders can scatter, spreading feral pigs to a new, larger territory.
  - linuxftw 6y ago
    > spreading feral pigs to a new, larger territory. This is only a problem if there are not hunters there. If there enough hunters, the pig problem will disappear.
    - travmatt 6y ago
      Texas has a year round open season on board and a lot of hunters, some of whom attach machine guns to helicopters and kill entire groups at a time. Feral hogs are still a scourge in Texas, I doubt that’s because Texas doesn’t have enough hunters.
      - cwcurrie 6y ago
        I mean, it kind of is. As other comments have mentioned, most of Texas' population lives in large urban areas. Even though hogs are starting to show up in and around cities (I have personally seen them right next to I-45 in The Woodlands/Conroe area immediately north of Houston), it's illegal to shoot them there. And there are only so many people willing to spend their own time and money to leave the city and go kill them. If we're talking straight theory (and this is HN so why wouldn't we), all it should take is enough predators to reduce/eliminate any given prey population to the desired number. The predator count that is needed could itself be reduced if more effective predation methods are available, but it's still a numbers game.
        hnick 6y ago
        > And there are only so many people willing to spend their own time and money to leave the city and go kill them. Have permits and bounties been discussed? It has backfired with cases like cobras in India, but I don't see such a risk here. I'm not always one to go for a market based solution but it looks like it could help here.
        cwcurrie 6y ago
        I'm not sure if Texas Parks & Wildlife has discussed bounties to encourage culling. Such a program would probably require increased taxes to fund, which is not likely to be popular... though with the apparent increasing coverage of the issue, maybe that wouldn't be a problem. If everyone is on board, then it's just a question of how much the people (read: the government) are willing to spend. I would also be concerned about unintended consequences, like you mentioned. I know for a fact that there are people today who, if they manage to trap the right pigs, would try to sell them. Their market would be landowners that offer canned hunts on a high-fenced property (say, $300 for a guaranteed large hog kill). Sure, the hog is still dead - but what if it breeds first? What if the piglets then escaped? Personally I'd feel dirty if I didn't cull the animals I trapped immediately, but if I were less financially secure, maybe not.
        6y ago
- Forge36 6y ago
  Open season without limits should be an easy way to deal with many of them. This is usually true for most "nuance animals" Why track them and remove?
  - tonyarkles 6y ago
    West of Ontario in Saskatchewan, wild board are considered to be pests and it is open season. https://www.rgsl.ca/wild-boar-in-saskatchewan/ https://www.rgsl.ca/wild-boar-in-saskatchewan/
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    The scale of the problem - at least in some states - makes eradication impossible. Feral hogs have a gestation period of only 115 days and reach sexual maturity in just 6 months. Texas has 4 million feral pigs. They need to kill 75 percent a year just to keep the population stabile. Texas already has 24/7, 365 open hunting (with dogs, traps, helicopters, etc) and it is not adequate.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      "hunting" almost seems like a euphemistic term when people are shooting machine guns and automatic shotguns out the side of a helicopter. I realize they are an invasive species and can't be allowed to multiply unchecked, but it makes me sad to think of fairly intelligent animals being slaughtered en masse, often with no intention of recovering the meat. I do understand they are quite dangerous and destructive creatures, but still...
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        When it comes to hogs, it's a matter of extermination, not 'hunting'/sport. Pulling punches with notions of sportsmanship and respect for the animal totally misses the point. These aren't elk. Of course, even the extreme measures taken against hogs (explosives, machine guns, etc) seem to be doing little good.
        6y ago
- wgerard 6y ago
  The article touches on this: > The latter method [encouraging recreational hunting] has sometimes backfired dramatically when surviving animals spread across the state. In some places, for-profit hunting outfits have worsened the problem by importing feral pigs Basically, it doesn’t seem to work for pigs (thus why Montana banned hunting them).
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > it doesn’t seem to work for pigs (thus why Montana banned hunting them) According to the article, this is because Montana doesn't have any pigs. You can't hunt pigs without bringing them in if there are no local pigs. But that's not an issue that applies to places that have too many local pigs.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    In Texas, it is legal to hunt hogs year round. The point about "surviving pigs spreading across the state" doesn't make any sense. If they have no predators, their population is going to expand no matter what you do, until they hit a natural limit on food.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      I remember reading about the rationale elsewhere. The gist of it was that if you attack a pack, you should not leave any survivors. The survivors learn of the danger of being hunted and adapt to it, making it very difficult to hunt them (and perhaps their descendants?). So it's best to leave hunting them to professionals who would ensure they get the whole pack, rather than amateurs who get one or two, but make the rest a much bigger problem.
      - travmatt 6y ago
        There was a JRE episode with a coyote expert who touched on this. It was relatively easy to eradicate wolves, because they have a strong pack mentality and will stick together even as members die. Pigs and coyotes would disperse into groups of two and three, widening their geographic range and still breeding.
- knaq 6y ago
  We don't put effort into things sooner because the effort and side-effects seem so terrible, but this is short-sighted thinking for an infestation that will become permanent. Right now, those huge killer wasps from Asia are nesting in Washington State. There is a silly ineffective effort to track down the nest, as if there would be only one nest. That won't work, and the pests will eventually spread all across the Americas. We could solve it, at the cost of a short-term ecological mess. Simply dump pesticide from aircraft, covering a 100-mile diameter region, in quantity sufficient to kill every member of the order Hymenoptera. We won't do it, and so both North America and South America will eternally be infested.
hownottowrite 6y ago
The pigoons are coming.
- kjs3 6y ago
  Was waiting for an Atwood call-out...was not disappointed.
2arrs2ells 6y ago
There's a great reply-all on Feral Hogs: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hw3d https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hw3d that explores the tweet: “Legit question for rural Americans - how do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 min while my small kids play.”
- rkuykendall-com 6y ago
  This episode was amazing. They use the tweet, which mostly just fueled a day of twitter memes, as a jumping off point into a really fantastic dive into the entire issue. The tweet author is also involved and it's so great.
- regnarg 6y ago
  An LMG sounds like a good choice.
- rozab 6y ago
  Strange how they didn't even address the main point, which is that if your young children are being swarmed by 30-50 feral hogs you probably aren't going to disappear into your house, unlock your gun safe, retrieve and load your gun then come back to their rescue 5 minutes later. That just seems like a gratuitous excuse to shoot 30-50 feral hogs. And yet, it sounds like this is literally what the guy did. PJ: Willie told me the reason his wife was scared is these weren’t like, barnyard pigs, they were feral hogs. They’re more like wild boars – some have big sharp tusks, they’re much bigger, with longer legs. They move really fast. And that moment, there was a bunch of them swarming around his 4 and 5 year old. It was scary. WILLIE: I went to my safe. I got my gun. I got my shells. Went right out on the back porch. PJ: And how were the hogs acting? Were they like moving quickly? Were they– WILLIE: Well, yeah. You know, they’re running all through the yard from the back of my yard all the way to the front. And then I pick out, of course, the ones that look the meanest. The one with the tusk. These are two or three hundred pound hogs. I’m not letting them near my family. PJ: Yeah– WILLIE: So, just for lack of a better term, I just start laying them down.
  - 3633735324 6y ago
teslabox 6y ago
It's very hard to get control of invasive species. In a story here about tumbleweeds I said these were an invasive species from Russia, wondered what from the Americas had invaded the rest of the world, and a bunch of responders provided examples [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21967020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21967020 Senestech's system for controlling rodents [1] is an ovary poison that stops female rodents from reproducing. The system is deployed continuously to keep rodent populations down in cities. But trying to kill all the rats in a city is probably not a good idea either: "A Vancouver rat study is showing us how pest control can backfire... " [2]: >> [Rats] may be just as much a part of our city as sidewalks and lampposts. We would all be better off if, under most circumstances, we simply left them alone. [2] Invasive ferrel/hybrid pigs are not comparable to rats, and I don't think a case can be made to let them alone. Maybe something like contrapest [3] could be developed for these invasive hybrid/ferrel pigs. [1] https://senestech.com https://senestech.com [2] http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/the-case-for-leaving-city-rats-alone http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/the-case-for-leaving-city-ra... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest
- bigbubba 6y ago
  What of Alberta's rat control? From what I've heard it's not perfect, but still pretty good. Good enough for Alberta to generally be considered 'rat free.'
  - steve_adams_86 6y ago
    My limited experience doesn't mean much in the big picture, but this comment struck me as funny because one of my few memories of Alberta was seeing two rats chasing and fighting over the lid of a food container. I guess I got lucky.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      Alberta still has native 'pack rats' which could perhaps be mistaken for 'true rats' (the sort Alberta is ostensibly free of.) They are still actively fighting them, it's a constant battle I suppose, but at least in theory there aren't any permanent breeding populations of true rats in Alberta. You're not even allowed to own a pet rat there.
igetspam 6y ago
Problem: people are hungry Solution: eat animals Problem: people like eating animals and want more Solution: selectively breed animals in a way that makes them reproduce rapidly Problem: poor containment has caused selectively bred animals to breed with wild animals and created explosive population growth Solution: kill all the animals? "[Scientists] are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something." - Jurassic Park Perhaps we should stop trying to screw with nature. We end up with things like explosive population growth and I don't know... SARS, COVID, etc.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I think this is more or less correct, but I'm not aware of any conclusive evidence tying COVID to "meddling with nature". I guess you could consider dense, highly-connected human settlements to be an example of this, increasing susceptibility to pandemics, but I don't think that's a very useful criticism.
- simonh 6y ago
  Agriculture eh, what a mistake.
  - shuntress 6y ago
    We should go back to spending 100% of our non-sleeping time wandering around trying to eat whatever we find on the ground. The good old days.
    - chillwaves 6y ago
      Sounds like a myth to me. Humans were at the top of the food chain even before farming. Relying on what can be foraged/hunted would keep the human population in check instead of being propped up by agriculture -- and all the problems that brings.
      - int_19h 6y ago
        It would also keep the human population dying young because of easily preventable (by an industrial civilization) diseases, or just plain starvation.
larrydag 6y ago
I'm in Texas. This is a big problem in this region of the USA. Texas has allowed open season all year round for hunting feral pigs/hogs. I'm curious what this has done to the population per the article. More info from Texas gov https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/nuisance/feral_hogs/ https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/nuisance/feral_hogs/
- protomyth 6y ago
  I cannot find the source, but I heard Texas is only taking out 70% of the needed hogs to hold the population even, much less reduce it.
  - tristor 6y ago
    This is partly due to urbanization and city ordinance. This is an issue near and dear to me here in Texas. Feral hogs are, like many other wild animals, adapting to the ecosystem created by humans. One downside though is that you cannot hunt/kill them in city limits. It's very commonplace for feral hogs to bed down in suburbs and populate there, so no matter how many people go on hog "hunts" from helicopters with rifles, it won't change the fact that in that neighborhood park you have hogs rutting in a no-kill zone. There's no nice, fully socially acceptable answer, because even in Texas the majority of city folks are not comfortable with the reality of killing another living creature, and they certainly aren't comfortable with people using firearms inside the city. Unlike deer issues, you can't do crossbow hunts for feral hogs because they're dangerous and travel in packs. You need firearms with high magazine capacities to safely do feral hog abatement hunts. In addition to all of the above, Texas is uniquely difficult to resolve this situation for because of the size of the state. Texas is big, and feral hogs range across the entire state. In many ways, there's simply not enough people who are interested and able to spend their free time during the week shooting hogs. Because of population centralization in cities, people do it as a weekend trip and usually with a company that charges them to handle the logistics, because it's also not okay to just walk on random land here as every part of the state is private property unless otherwise designated. Managing the feral hog problem here costs the state billions of dollars and is like trying to hold back the floodwaters by putting your finger in a collapsing dam.
ChuckMcM 6y ago
They are quite the nuisance in parts of California. If you're hiking, adding feral pig encounter to the existing mountain lion or bear encounter, can be overwhelming. I found it interesting how hunting backfires (scatters them and increases their range) as it seems to be always pounded into me "hunted out of existence" was a common thing that hunters would do if left to their own devices (I know, there is a LOT of propaganda in this space!) That said, I'm surprised there are not more trapping & slaughtering programs in place. The engineer in me wants to slaughter the pigs, use the cesium capsules at Hanford to irradiate/sterilize the meat of all bacteria and parasites, and then turn it into free bacon and/or jerky for whomever needs it. Impractical for sure but free bacon right?
- thatguy0900 6y ago
  You could just cook the meat right? Why irradiate it?
  - ChuckMcM 6y ago
    Well if you were making jerky the salting process might not kill all the parasites. But it was more a nod to the story that came across HN a few days ago about Hanford having all this Cesium around that they weren't using. And it is in Washington state (a state with a pig problem) and the engineer in me likes the synergy of turning two problems into a public good.
    - thatguy0900 6y ago
      Ah, I missed that reference. I would be down to try free nuclear jerky.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  It seems you might be aware of this already, but irradiation of pork to kill parasites is an established practice in the food industry. Food irradiation in general is safe and effective, but weirds a lot of the general public out (particularly those with low scientific literacy. Irradiated food doesn't become radioactive!) There may be something to be said about the hazards of handling a gamma source like Cs-137 safetly and making sure nobody drops it in the city dump or steals a truck carrying it, but X-ray and electron beam irradiation don't have these drawbacks. Many people today eat irradiated food without ever realizing it, though if they did realize it they might balk.
Camillo 6y ago
Australia fought a war against invasive wildlife in the 1930s, and was famously defeated by the Emus. America is much more powerful than Australia, but it has had trouble winning wars recently. On top of that, this one would be fought on its own soil, which is something it has not experienced in more than a century. And of course, pigs are much stronger and much smarter than emus. Americans would be wise not to underestimate the threat.
quercusa 6y ago
Texan capitalism to the rescue: https://www.helibacon.com/ https://www.helibacon.com/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
umvi 6y ago
Aren't there any natural north american predators that could eat swine? Wolves, maybe? Or are the sounders too intimidating to predators?
- protomyth 6y ago
  They are rather tough to kill for the average predator in North America. Heck, there is a reason that knights hunted the things to prove how good they were. When you have to put a piece of metal on the spear to keep the thing from coming up the spear and killing you too, it marks a tough animal. If I remember right, part of the problem is that they are not great eating. Although, a animal overrunning Texas boggles my mind.
- darkwizard42 6y ago
  A link higher up in the thread showed that they can actually even kill black bears... Most of the predators are listed as hunting the young, but based on how frequently these breed, it seems like those wouldn't work well enough
ncmncm 6y ago
Was zero until Hernan de Soto let some of his go, 500 years ago. Might it have been a major vector of smallpox?
- philwelch 6y ago
  Yes. That’s exactly what it was.
justicezyx 6y ago
Setup a import company in China, label these pigs as rural free range pig hunted and butchered by American farmers in their backyards. Start counting money and proclaimed a national hero and the icon of mutual dependency between us and China... Sounds like a good idea. And this is free for copying.
r0s 6y ago
I thought the normal population control method was neutering and releasing sterile males into the wild. Has that been tried?
- ryathal 6y ago
  That's generally done with thing like feral cat populations where there is some positive effect of the feral cats existing like rodent control. Also, just killing cats is way less socially acceptable than killing pigs.
  - lovegoblin 6y ago
    > some positive effect of the feral cats existing like rodent control And "endangered bird control" :/
onetimemanytime 6y ago
Eventually they will figure a way to make them sterile. It's a huge problem so there's money in figuring it out. Drop some "food" and they win the Darwin Award once they eat it.
tomohawk 6y ago
Ontario is lauded for essentially doing nothing other than studying the situation and haplessly following up reports weeks and months later. Also, not actually getting rid of any hogs. But, the real problem is allowing hunters to shoot them when they see them. Got it.
hijp 6y ago
Are there any audio deterrents for pigs like there are for birds? I think I've read about playing hawk screams or bird distress calls to scare away birds from airports. Would something similar like playing a cougar scream be enough to keep pigs out of an area?
- djrogers 6y ago
  Hogs and boar are not afraid of much once they're fully grown. They have few natural predators, and animals known to prey pigs them typically only prey on piglets, as a boar can turn the tables on even the deadliest predators if they get a little lucky (black bear and cougars for example). Your best bet for audio deterrence would be firing blank shells, and that's most effective on a sounder (herd) that's already been hunted.
EdwardDiego 6y ago
I hate to say it, but in NZ we've found our usage of sodium fluoroacetate (highly toxic to mammals) to control brushtail possums to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis, has had the side-effect of reducing what were once very high wild pig numbers - they scavenge the possum corpse, and in turn are poisoned. Which is very unpopular with pig hunters and people who don't like 'chemicals'. And not very feasible for countries with native/endemic mammals that may scavenge a hog corpse. But, poison works, albeit accidentally. We use a variety of other techniques to control introduced mammals - intensive trapping and poisoning in ecologically sensitive areas, judas goats[1], helicopter culling, and sometimes, just letting the free market handle it[2] - wild animal recovery is very good at keeping red deer populations at low - medium numbers... ...when the price of wild venison in Germany makes it economical. Although it has changed their behaviour - they become more daylight-averse, and quickly learn to hide from helicopters. [1]: https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/10136/judas-goat https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/10136/judas-goat [2]: https://www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved/apply-for-permits/business-or-activity/national-wild-animal-recovery-operations/ https://www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved/apply-for-permits/busin...
RickJWagner 6y ago
I live in a rural area and have many friends who hunt deer and other game. I expect if the need arose, many of these would help thin the feral hog population with little incentive. (Maybe free access to land, or even a discounted hunting license for next year.) It wouldn't take much.

96 points by DLay 6y ago

>> The province of Ontario has an emerging population of a few hundred pigs, and it’s educating the public, collecting data, and testing how to track and remove swine. Just tell the hunters you have a problem and invite them in to eradicate them. I feel like government bodies whose job is to deal with such things never want to "solve" a problem completely, but would rather "manage" it so they can keep their job. Some day these few hundred pigs will be 10's of thousands or more and they'll look back and wonder why they didn't put more effort in sooner.

DFHippie 6y ago
As it says in the article, there are problems with hunting: pigs are smart and become nocturnal to avoid hunters, making them more difficult to track; also because they are smart, pigs start traveling when they find they are being hunted and sounders can scatter, spreading feral pigs to a new, larger territory.
- linuxftw 6y ago
  > spreading feral pigs to a new, larger territory. This is only a problem if there are not hunters there. If there enough hunters, the pig problem will disappear.
  - travmatt 6y ago
    Texas has a year round open season on board and a lot of hunters, some of whom attach machine guns to helicopters and kill entire groups at a time. Feral hogs are still a scourge in Texas, I doubt that’s because Texas doesn’t have enough hunters.
    - cwcurrie 6y ago
      I mean, it kind of is. As other comments have mentioned, most of Texas' population lives in large urban areas. Even though hogs are starting to show up in and around cities (I have personally seen them right next to I-45 in The Woodlands/Conroe area immediately north of Houston), it's illegal to shoot them there. And there are only so many people willing to spend their own time and money to leave the city and go kill them. If we're talking straight theory (and this is HN so why wouldn't we), all it should take is enough predators to reduce/eliminate any given prey population to the desired number. The predator count that is needed could itself be reduced if more effective predation methods are available, but it's still a numbers game.
      - hnick 6y ago
        > And there are only so many people willing to spend their own time and money to leave the city and go kill them. Have permits and bounties been discussed? It has backfired with cases like cobras in India, but I don't see such a risk here. I'm not always one to go for a market based solution but it looks like it could help here.
        cwcurrie 6y ago
        I'm not sure if Texas Parks & Wildlife has discussed bounties to encourage culling. Such a program would probably require increased taxes to fund, which is not likely to be popular... though with the apparent increasing coverage of the issue, maybe that wouldn't be a problem. If everyone is on board, then it's just a question of how much the people (read: the government) are willing to spend. I would also be concerned about unintended consequences, like you mentioned. I know for a fact that there are people today who, if they manage to trap the right pigs, would try to sell them. Their market would be landowners that offer canned hunts on a high-fenced property (say, $300 for a guaranteed large hog kill). Sure, the hog is still dead - but what if it breeds first? What if the piglets then escaped? Personally I'd feel dirty if I didn't cull the animals I trapped immediately, but if I were less financially secure, maybe not.
        6y ago
Forge36 6y ago
Open season without limits should be an easy way to deal with many of them. This is usually true for most "nuance animals" Why track them and remove?
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  West of Ontario in Saskatchewan, wild board are considered to be pests and it is open season. https://www.rgsl.ca/wild-boar-in-saskatchewan/ https://www.rgsl.ca/wild-boar-in-saskatchewan/
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  The scale of the problem - at least in some states - makes eradication impossible. Feral hogs have a gestation period of only 115 days and reach sexual maturity in just 6 months. Texas has 4 million feral pigs. They need to kill 75 percent a year just to keep the population stabile. Texas already has 24/7, 365 open hunting (with dogs, traps, helicopters, etc) and it is not adequate.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    "hunting" almost seems like a euphemistic term when people are shooting machine guns and automatic shotguns out the side of a helicopter. I realize they are an invasive species and can't be allowed to multiply unchecked, but it makes me sad to think of fairly intelligent animals being slaughtered en masse, often with no intention of recovering the meat. I do understand they are quite dangerous and destructive creatures, but still...
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      When it comes to hogs, it's a matter of extermination, not 'hunting'/sport. Pulling punches with notions of sportsmanship and respect for the animal totally misses the point. These aren't elk. Of course, even the extreme measures taken against hogs (explosives, machine guns, etc) seem to be doing little good.
      - 6y ago
wgerard 6y ago
The article touches on this: > The latter method [encouraging recreational hunting] has sometimes backfired dramatically when surviving animals spread across the state. In some places, for-profit hunting outfits have worsened the problem by importing feral pigs Basically, it doesn’t seem to work for pigs (thus why Montana banned hunting them).
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > it doesn’t seem to work for pigs (thus why Montana banned hunting them) According to the article, this is because Montana doesn't have any pigs. You can't hunt pigs without bringing them in if there are no local pigs. But that's not an issue that applies to places that have too many local pigs.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  In Texas, it is legal to hunt hogs year round. The point about "surviving pigs spreading across the state" doesn't make any sense. If they have no predators, their population is going to expand no matter what you do, until they hit a natural limit on food.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    I remember reading about the rationale elsewhere. The gist of it was that if you attack a pack, you should not leave any survivors. The survivors learn of the danger of being hunted and adapt to it, making it very difficult to hunt them (and perhaps their descendants?). So it's best to leave hunting them to professionals who would ensure they get the whole pack, rather than amateurs who get one or two, but make the rest a much bigger problem.
    - travmatt 6y ago
      There was a JRE episode with a coyote expert who touched on this. It was relatively easy to eradicate wolves, because they have a strong pack mentality and will stick together even as members die. Pigs and coyotes would disperse into groups of two and three, widening their geographic range and still breeding.
knaq 6y ago
We don't put effort into things sooner because the effort and side-effects seem so terrible, but this is short-sighted thinking for an infestation that will become permanent. Right now, those huge killer wasps from Asia are nesting in Washington State. There is a silly ineffective effort to track down the nest, as if there would be only one nest. That won't work, and the pests will eventually spread all across the Americas. We could solve it, at the cost of a short-term ecological mess. Simply dump pesticide from aircraft, covering a 100-mile diameter region, in quantity sufficient to kill every member of the order Hymenoptera. We won't do it, and so both North America and South America will eternally be infested.

hownottowrite 6y ago

The pigoons are coming.

kjs3 6y ago
Was waiting for an Atwood call-out...was not disappointed.

2arrs2ells 6y ago

There's a great reply-all on Feral Hogs: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hw3d https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hw3d that explores the tweet: “Legit question for rural Americans - how do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 min while my small kids play.”

rkuykendall-com 6y ago
This episode was amazing. They use the tweet, which mostly just fueled a day of twitter memes, as a jumping off point into a really fantastic dive into the entire issue. The tweet author is also involved and it's so great.
regnarg 6y ago
An LMG sounds like a good choice.
rozab 6y ago
Strange how they didn't even address the main point, which is that if your young children are being swarmed by 30-50 feral hogs you probably aren't going to disappear into your house, unlock your gun safe, retrieve and load your gun then come back to their rescue 5 minutes later. That just seems like a gratuitous excuse to shoot 30-50 feral hogs. And yet, it sounds like this is literally what the guy did. PJ: Willie told me the reason his wife was scared is these weren’t like, barnyard pigs, they were feral hogs. They’re more like wild boars – some have big sharp tusks, they’re much bigger, with longer legs. They move really fast. And that moment, there was a bunch of them swarming around his 4 and 5 year old. It was scary. WILLIE: I went to my safe. I got my gun. I got my shells. Went right out on the back porch. PJ: And how were the hogs acting? Were they like moving quickly? Were they– WILLIE: Well, yeah. You know, they’re running all through the yard from the back of my yard all the way to the front. And then I pick out, of course, the ones that look the meanest. The one with the tusk. These are two or three hundred pound hogs. I’m not letting them near my family. PJ: Yeah– WILLIE: So, just for lack of a better term, I just start laying them down.
- 3633735324 6y ago

teslabox 6y ago

It's very hard to get control of invasive species. In a story here about tumbleweeds I said these were an invasive species from Russia, wondered what from the Americas had invaded the rest of the world, and a bunch of responders provided examples [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21967020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21967020 Senestech's system for controlling rodents [1] is an ovary poison that stops female rodents from reproducing. The system is deployed continuously to keep rodent populations down in cities. But trying to kill all the rats in a city is probably not a good idea either: "A Vancouver rat study is showing us how pest control can backfire... " [2]: >> [Rats] may be just as much a part of our city as sidewalks and lampposts. We would all be better off if, under most circumstances, we simply left them alone. [2] Invasive ferrel/hybrid pigs are not comparable to rats, and I don't think a case can be made to let them alone. Maybe something like contrapest [3] could be developed for these invasive hybrid/ferrel pigs. [1] https://senestech.com https://senestech.com [2] http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/the-case-for-leaving-city-rats-alone http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/the-case-for-leaving-city-ra... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest

bigbubba 6y ago
What of Alberta's rat control? From what I've heard it's not perfect, but still pretty good. Good enough for Alberta to generally be considered 'rat free.'
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  My limited experience doesn't mean much in the big picture, but this comment struck me as funny because one of my few memories of Alberta was seeing two rats chasing and fighting over the lid of a food container. I guess I got lucky.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Alberta still has native 'pack rats' which could perhaps be mistaken for 'true rats' (the sort Alberta is ostensibly free of.) They are still actively fighting them, it's a constant battle I suppose, but at least in theory there aren't any permanent breeding populations of true rats in Alberta. You're not even allowed to own a pet rat there.

igetspam 6y ago

Problem: people are hungry Solution: eat animals Problem: people like eating animals and want more Solution: selectively breed animals in a way that makes them reproduce rapidly Problem: poor containment has caused selectively bred animals to breed with wild animals and created explosive population growth Solution: kill all the animals? "[Scientists] are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something." - Jurassic Park Perhaps we should stop trying to screw with nature. We end up with things like explosive population growth and I don't know... SARS, COVID, etc.

leetcrew 6y ago
I think this is more or less correct, but I'm not aware of any conclusive evidence tying COVID to "meddling with nature". I guess you could consider dense, highly-connected human settlements to be an example of this, increasing susceptibility to pandemics, but I don't think that's a very useful criticism.
simonh 6y ago
Agriculture eh, what a mistake.
- shuntress 6y ago
  We should go back to spending 100% of our non-sleeping time wandering around trying to eat whatever we find on the ground. The good old days.
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    Sounds like a myth to me. Humans were at the top of the food chain even before farming. Relying on what can be foraged/hunted would keep the human population in check instead of being propped up by agriculture -- and all the problems that brings.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      It would also keep the human population dying young because of easily preventable (by an industrial civilization) diseases, or just plain starvation.

larrydag 6y ago

I'm in Texas. This is a big problem in this region of the USA. Texas has allowed open season all year round for hunting feral pigs/hogs. I'm curious what this has done to the population per the article. More info from Texas gov https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/nuisance/feral_hogs/ https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/nuisance/feral_hogs/

protomyth 6y ago
I cannot find the source, but I heard Texas is only taking out 70% of the needed hogs to hold the population even, much less reduce it.
- tristor 6y ago
  This is partly due to urbanization and city ordinance. This is an issue near and dear to me here in Texas. Feral hogs are, like many other wild animals, adapting to the ecosystem created by humans. One downside though is that you cannot hunt/kill them in city limits. It's very commonplace for feral hogs to bed down in suburbs and populate there, so no matter how many people go on hog "hunts" from helicopters with rifles, it won't change the fact that in that neighborhood park you have hogs rutting in a no-kill zone. There's no nice, fully socially acceptable answer, because even in Texas the majority of city folks are not comfortable with the reality of killing another living creature, and they certainly aren't comfortable with people using firearms inside the city. Unlike deer issues, you can't do crossbow hunts for feral hogs because they're dangerous and travel in packs. You need firearms with high magazine capacities to safely do feral hog abatement hunts. In addition to all of the above, Texas is uniquely difficult to resolve this situation for because of the size of the state. Texas is big, and feral hogs range across the entire state. In many ways, there's simply not enough people who are interested and able to spend their free time during the week shooting hogs. Because of population centralization in cities, people do it as a weekend trip and usually with a company that charges them to handle the logistics, because it's also not okay to just walk on random land here as every part of the state is private property unless otherwise designated. Managing the feral hog problem here costs the state billions of dollars and is like trying to hold back the floodwaters by putting your finger in a collapsing dam.

ChuckMcM 6y ago

They are quite the nuisance in parts of California. If you're hiking, adding feral pig encounter to the existing mountain lion or bear encounter, can be overwhelming. I found it interesting how hunting backfires (scatters them and increases their range) as it seems to be always pounded into me "hunted out of existence" was a common thing that hunters would do if left to their own devices (I know, there is a LOT of propaganda in this space!) That said, I'm surprised there are not more trapping & slaughtering programs in place. The engineer in me wants to slaughter the pigs, use the cesium capsules at Hanford to irradiate/sterilize the meat of all bacteria and parasites, and then turn it into free bacon and/or jerky for whomever needs it. Impractical for sure but free bacon right?

thatguy0900 6y ago
You could just cook the meat right? Why irradiate it?
- ChuckMcM 6y ago
  Well if you were making jerky the salting process might not kill all the parasites. But it was more a nod to the story that came across HN a few days ago about Hanford having all this Cesium around that they weren't using. And it is in Washington state (a state with a pig problem) and the engineer in me likes the synergy of turning two problems into a public good.
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    Ah, I missed that reference. I would be down to try free nuclear jerky.
bigbubba 6y ago
It seems you might be aware of this already, but irradiation of pork to kill parasites is an established practice in the food industry. Food irradiation in general is safe and effective, but weirds a lot of the general public out (particularly those with low scientific literacy. Irradiated food doesn't become radioactive!) There may be something to be said about the hazards of handling a gamma source like Cs-137 safetly and making sure nobody drops it in the city dump or steals a truck carrying it, but X-ray and electron beam irradiation don't have these drawbacks. Many people today eat irradiated food without ever realizing it, though if they did realize it they might balk.

Camillo 6y ago

Australia fought a war against invasive wildlife in the 1930s, and was famously defeated by the Emus. America is much more powerful than Australia, but it has had trouble winning wars recently. On top of that, this one would be fought on its own soil, which is something it has not experienced in more than a century. And of course, pigs are much stronger and much smarter than emus. Americans would be wise not to underestimate the threat.

quercusa 6y ago

Texan capitalism to the rescue: https://www.helibacon.com/ https://www.helibacon.com/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

umvi 6y ago

Aren't there any natural north american predators that could eat swine? Wolves, maybe? Or are the sounders too intimidating to predators?

protomyth 6y ago
They are rather tough to kill for the average predator in North America. Heck, there is a reason that knights hunted the things to prove how good they were. When you have to put a piece of metal on the spear to keep the thing from coming up the spear and killing you too, it marks a tough animal. If I remember right, part of the problem is that they are not great eating. Although, a animal overrunning Texas boggles my mind.
darkwizard42 6y ago
A link higher up in the thread showed that they can actually even kill black bears... Most of the predators are listed as hunting the young, but based on how frequently these breed, it seems like those wouldn't work well enough

ncmncm 6y ago

Was zero until Hernan de Soto let some of his go, 500 years ago. Might it have been a major vector of smallpox?

philwelch 6y ago
Yes. That’s exactly what it was.

justicezyx 6y ago

Setup a import company in China, label these pigs as rural free range pig hunted and butchered by American farmers in their backyards. Start counting money and proclaimed a national hero and the icon of mutual dependency between us and China... Sounds like a good idea. And this is free for copying.

r0s 6y ago

I thought the normal population control method was neutering and releasing sterile males into the wild. Has that been tried?

ryathal 6y ago
That's generally done with thing like feral cat populations where there is some positive effect of the feral cats existing like rodent control. Also, just killing cats is way less socially acceptable than killing pigs.
- lovegoblin 6y ago
  > some positive effect of the feral cats existing like rodent control And "endangered bird control" :/

onetimemanytime 6y ago

Eventually they will figure a way to make them sterile. It's a huge problem so there's money in figuring it out. Drop some "food" and they win the Darwin Award once they eat it.

tomohawk 6y ago

Ontario is lauded for essentially doing nothing other than studying the situation and haplessly following up reports weeks and months later. Also, not actually getting rid of any hogs. But, the real problem is allowing hunters to shoot them when they see them. Got it.

hijp 6y ago

Are there any audio deterrents for pigs like there are for birds? I think I've read about playing hawk screams or bird distress calls to scare away birds from airports. Would something similar like playing a cougar scream be enough to keep pigs out of an area?

djrogers 6y ago
Hogs and boar are not afraid of much once they're fully grown. They have few natural predators, and animals known to prey pigs them typically only prey on piglets, as a boar can turn the tables on even the deadliest predators if they get a little lucky (black bear and cougars for example). Your best bet for audio deterrence would be firing blank shells, and that's most effective on a sounder (herd) that's already been hunted.

EdwardDiego 6y ago

I hate to say it, but in NZ we've found our usage of sodium fluoroacetate (highly toxic to mammals) to control brushtail possums to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis, has had the side-effect of reducing what were once very high wild pig numbers - they scavenge the possum corpse, and in turn are poisoned. Which is very unpopular with pig hunters and people who don't like 'chemicals'. And not very feasible for countries with native/endemic mammals that may scavenge a hog corpse. But, poison works, albeit accidentally. We use a variety of other techniques to control introduced mammals - intensive trapping and poisoning in ecologically sensitive areas, judas goats[1], helicopter culling, and sometimes, just letting the free market handle it[2] - wild animal recovery is very good at keeping red deer populations at low - medium numbers... ...when the price of wild venison in Germany makes it economical. Although it has changed their behaviour - they become more daylight-averse, and quickly learn to hide from helicopters. [1]: https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/10136/judas-goat https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/10136/judas-goat [2]: https://www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved/apply-for-permits/business-or-activity/national-wild-animal-recovery-operations/ https://www.doc.govt.nz/get-involved/apply-for-permits/busin...

RickJWagner 6y ago

I live in a rural area and have many friends who hunt deer and other game. I expect if the need arose, many of these would help thin the feral hog population with little incentive. (Maybe free access to land, or even a discounted hunting license for next year.) It wouldn't take much.