Caught on camera: Pesky wild pigs in Delaware

If you want to understand the fuss over wild pigs, just ask Georgetown lawyer J. Everett Moore.

Moore, an avid sportsman, used to hunt in Alabama on a leased property of about 1,000 acres. His hunt club killed as many as 300 wild hogs every year just to keep the population in check.

"If you didn't . . . they would tear everything up," he said, "it would literally look like someone had dropped a bomb," he said.

The federal agriculture department estimates the swine are responsible for $1.5 billion in damages a year.

On a barrier island in South Carolina, wild hogs were blamed for depredation of sea turtle nests. In Florida, officials believe they contributed to the decline of several rare plant and animal species. They carry diseases that spread to wildlife, livestock and humans.

So it's no wonder Delaware wildlife officials became very concerned when a remote, motion-sensing camera set up in a wooded area in Sussex County snapped an image of a wild pig.

Delaware and Maryland are among 11 states without wild hog populations. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, all have pockets of feral swine.

But that photo raised alarms among state wildlife officials worried that escaped domesticated pigs could quickly turn wild, rapidly reproduce and set off a cascade of destruction.

"We don't want one," said Rob Hossler, a state wildlife administrator. "To date, all our pig issues have been single pigs, either escapees or released 'pets.' That said, we recently heard of a group of as many as five pigs but we have not been able to substantiate that yet."

So far, state officials haven't been able to locate the pig in the photograph or others believed to be in the Long Neck area. This despite having installed additional trail cameras on land that the Sussex County Council purchased for future expansion of the Inland Bays Wastewater Treatment facility.

Sussex County Engineer Michael Izzo said he wasn't aware hogs might be on the property until he was contacted by state wildlife officials.

"This could be just a "wild goose or pig chase," Hossler said. "There could be numerous reasons why we have yet to find the pig"

Among them, Hossler said, are that the pig may have been harvested by a hunter or recovered by its owner.

Delaware has had pigs turn up every now and then. In 2013, a pet pig escaped or was turned loose, no one is certain. It ended up rooting in a cut-over corn field in Dover near Delaware Technical and Community College. The pig was shot.

There are one, maybe two of these cases of escapees or releases every year, Hossler said. Each is a serious matter.

"They are bad," Hossler said. "They are not something we want."

Moore said he knows from experience just how bad wild hogs can be. The ruts they create are so deep, it becomes almost impossible to drive across a field or even walk there.

In the early evening, just before dusk, you could be in a deer stand and hear a pack of wild hogs squealing and moving through, he said.

Moore said he's also hunted in South Carolina. There, he said, the guides have no fear of alligators; no fear of poisonous snakes.

"They were petrified of wild boars," he said.

A boar will charge a human. Domesticated pigs can also quickly develop tusks once they are out in the wild. They will, according the the U.S. Department of Agriculture, take down and eat newborn calves, lambs and goats –a problem in Texas where there are an estimated 2 million wild swine.

As they expand into more urban settings, they can turn aggressive toward people – especially people who are carrying food. They are responsible for about $40 million in damages from vehicle collisions each year.

They are, said Jonathan McKnight, a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, a huge problem for both agriculture and the environment.

"They move into a forest system and tear everything up," McKnight said. "The loss of native plants on the forest floor lets in invasives. ...

"We're determined not to let them take hold," McKnight said. "The sooner you act, the better off you are."

"If a farmer is sloppy with his fences, all it takes is a couple of escapees," he said.

The History of Hogs

Columbus, picked up eight pigs on a stop at the Canary Islands and introduced them to the Caribbean during his second voyage. From there, they were introduced to the United States.

In colonial times in Maryland, tobacco farmers turned their wild hogs loose to forage and then captured and killed them when they put up supplies for the winter. Expressions like "ear mark" come from that era. Farmers used distinctive cuts on the ear of each of their hogs to mark and identify their property. Those pigs were likely brined and preserved in pork barrels.

McKnight said that along the river valleys of St. Mary's and Charles counties, you can still, more than 200 years later, see the legacy of damage caused by these free-ranging, hogs.

These days, there are three types of hogs and hybrid combinations.

There are the farm hogs, domesticated varieties that are raised in captivity.

There are Eurasian wild boar, introduced as free ranging pigs in some southern states decades ago.

And there are pet Polynesian pot-bellied pigs.

Federal officials believe there are three ways pigs enter the wild: escapees from farm operations, the intentional or accidential release of pet pigs and the intentional release of pigs to provide a hunting experience.

Up until the 1980s, feral hogs were a problem in southern and west coast states. In 1982, there were populations in 17 states. These days, federal officials estimate that there are feral hog populations in 39 states and possibly populations emerging in two more. All told, there are an estimated 6 million feral pigs on the loose nationwide.

"Both Maryland and Delaware have recognized the problem," said Dale Nolte, assistant wildlife disease coordinator with U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. "It's by far easier to keep an invasive species from becoming established" then to fix the problem once you have it.

What is being done?

Just last year, Congress provided $20 million to Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to set up a program, working with states, to address the feral swine problem. The agency has created a draft environmental assessment.

The goal: To protect agriculture, natural resources and guard against the spread of diseases. The federal role: Coordinating the effort and overseeing research.

States have different approaches to controlling the problem. In some states, hunting wild pigs is allowed and encouraged. In other states, like Delaware, it is illegal.

Just across the Delaware Memorial Bridge and to the north in New Jersey, wild pigs roam in rural parts of Gloucester County.

New Jersey supervising wildlife biologist Tony McBride said state officials believe they have the population mostly in check.

People are allowed to shoot wild hogs during deer season and typically two to three are shot each year, he said. State officials have gone in, spread bait and shot additional animals.

McBride said the population are escapees from a local farm and he said, they quickly reverted to their wild characteristics once they were free roaming.

"People were reporting damage," McBride said.

The good news is that the population hasn't expanded much or spread, he said.

"We've been lucky in that they've pretty much stayed there," he said.

But the problem with wild hogs, Nolte said, is this: "It's pretty difficult to figure out if you've taken out that very last pig."

Keeping Pigs Out

"We get most of our reports from the public occasionally through the use of trail cameras," Hossler said. "When we investigate an area we use trail cameras as well as looking for damage."

Hossler said the state hunting ban was a deliberate decision because they could see what was happening in other states.

"Their problem expanded once they allowed hunters to harvest them," he said. "What was happening is that states were unknowingly creating a hunting season for these invasive pests and unscrupulous individuals were obtaining and releasing pigs illegally for recreational or commercial hunting. We decided that if we made it illegal to hunt pigs, we would take the incentive away from people illegally releasing them to create something to hunt. We also made it illegal to make money off the activity."

The sources of resident hogs in Delaware are declining.

Daniel Shortridge, a spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture, said there is no registry for pet pigs in the state but records are kept for agricultural pork production operations.

"Hog production in Delaware has been on the decline ... largely due to market prices and increased production integration," he said. "The majority of farms in Delaware with hogs and pigs are small operations, with between 1 and 24 hogs."

In 1997, he said, there were 147 hog farms with 33,642 pigs. In 2012, the most recent year data was available, there were 59 hog farms with 5,891 pigs.

As for that report in Sussex County, it is still under investigation, he said. meanwhile, some large landowners keep an eye out for invasive animals like wild hogs.

At the vast, 6,000-acre Cypress Swamp, Delaware Wild Lands property manager and biologist Andrew Martin has been studying white tail deer populations over the last four years.

He has 18 trail cameras set up and so far, hasn't spotted a hog in any of the images.

For that, he is grateful.

"It would be disastrous," he said. "The swamp is sort of a unique jewel."

Reach Molly Murray at 463-3334 or mmurray@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @MollyMurraytnj.