Wild Pigs Are Causing Big Problems in California’s Bay Area, and Their Population Seems to Be Growing
Land managers and other authorities are ramping up efforts to trap and kill the destructive, non-native animals
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Feral pigs are going “hog wild” across the San Francisco Bay Area—and wildlife officials are ramping up their efforts to stop the destructive creatures.
Wild pigs are nothing new in the Golden State. However, land managers say they are becoming more problematic this year, likely because the state has had three wet winters in a row, which created an abundance of food for the non-native animals, reports KGO-TV’s Leslie Brinkley.
“We’ve seen the impacts increasing,” says Doug Bell, wildlife program manager at the East Bay Regional Park District in Oakland, to the Mercury News’ Paul Rogers. And the animals’ population seems to be growing, too.
Today, California’s wild pigs are often hybrids, with both domestic pig and European wild boar ancestors. “The combination made it a super invader,” Michael Marlow of the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program told the New York Times’ Thomas Fuller in 2022.
In the past, authorities have typically focused on hazing the wild pigs, turning to non-lethal deterrents like devices that emit high-pitched sounds and motion-sensitive lights. However, they’ve recently stepped up their efforts to trap and euthanize them.
Toward the end of last year, for example, the Santa Clara Valley Water District agreed to pay $125,000 to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to trap and kill wild pigs on some of the land it owns east of San Jose, per the Mercury News. And in May, the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority agreed to pay a local wildlife control company $243,000 over the next three years to kill wild pigs on the properties it manages.
“We are seeing a lot more pig damage,” says Aaron Hébert, the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority’s natural resources manager, to the Mercury News. “Trying to control the population and not just trying to haze them is now part of the strategy.”
It’s not clear exactly how many wild pigs live throughout California. However, officials say their numbers seem to be growing. Female pigs, called sows, can have up 4 to 12 piglets per litter, and they can produce up to two litters each year. The damaging creatures have now been found in 56 of California’s 58 counties.
Beyond California, wild pigs are also a problem in several other states. They’re widespread throughout the south and southeast, in states like Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida, according to maps created by the USDA.
Spanish and Russian explorers first brought pigs to California in the 18th and 19th centuries, and some of those domestic creatures got out and became feral. However, today’s wild pig problem mostly traces its roots to the 1920s, when a Canadian millionaire named George Gordon Moore purchased a ranch in Carmel Valley as a “theme park for the wealthy,” wrote Katie Dowd for SFGATE in 2019. Among activities like polo and golf, he offered hunting of imported European wild boars, which he let loose on the property. Some of those boars escaped and began breeding with the feral pigs, which created “a wild boar/feral domestic pig hybrid,” according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Since 1957, wild pigs have been considered a “game mammal” in California, which means it’s legal to hunt them. Growing up to 250 pounds, these omnivores feast on anything and everything they can find—from amphibians and small mammals to acorns, tubers, fruits and insects.
The pigs can also carry diseases and pathogens. On public lands, hikers have reported being charged, run over or aggressively followed by the pigs.
They also wreak havoc on landscapes, tearing up lawns, destroying irrigation systems and damaging creeks, ponds and streams. In some instances, this destruction paves the way for invasive plants like medusahead grass and goatgrass to proliferate.
“They’re basically rototilling the land,” says Cassie Bednar, natural resource program coordinator for Santa Clara County Parks, to SFGATE’s Kasia Pawlowska.
