For centuries wild pigs caused headaches for landowners in the American South, but the foragers’ small populations remained stable. In the past 30 years, though, their ranks have swollen until suddenly disease-carrying, crop-devouring swine have spread to 39 states. Now, wild pigs are five million strong and the targets of a $20-million federal initiative to get their numbers under control. 
 
 
 
 Settlers first brought the ancestors of today’s pigs to the South in the 1600s and let them roam free as a ready supply of fresh pork. Not surprisingly, some of the pigs wandered off and thrived in the wild, thanks to their indiscriminate appetites. 
 
 
 
 Wildlife biologists can’t really explain how pigs from a few pockets were able to extend their range so rapidly in recent years. “If you look at maps of pig distribution from the eighties, there's a lot of pigs, but primarily in Florida and Texas,” says Stephen Ditchkoff, a wildlife ecologist at Auburn University. “Today, populations in the southeast have exploded. In the Midwest and the north it's grown to be a significant problem.” Ditchkoff believes sportsmen transported the pigs so they could hunt them on their land. 
 
 
 
 As pigs spread, they wreak havoc on the lands they inhabit. Wild pigs cause at least $1.5 billion in damages and control costs each year, according to a 2007 survey, mostly to agriculture. Dubbed the “rototillers of nature,” they dig up fields, create wallows in pastures and destroy fences. A church in Texas was so worried that pigs would devour its annual pumpkin sale that it lobbied the local government to let hunters stand watch over the patch at night. They were right to fret. The 2.6 million pigs in Texas cause $500 million in damage each year—a liability of $200 per pig. “I’ve never seen any one species that can affect so many livelihoods and resources,” says Michael Bodenchuk, state director of Texas Wildlife Services. He is particularly worried about harm to native species and the 400 stream segments in Texas that are infected with bacteria from the pigs’ defecation. 
 
 
 
 Heeding concerns from state wildlife agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture created a new national program in April to halt and reverse this trend. It aims to wipe out pigs from two states every three to five years and stabilize the population within a decade. Dale Nolte, national coordinator of the program, says his first priority will be states with the fewest pigs; he will then work back to those like Texas that are overrun. One reason he wants to confront the states with the fewest pigs first is because the animals reproduce rapidly once they invade an area. If 70 percent of the pigs in a region are killed, the remaining ones can have piglets fast enough to replace all those lost in just two and a half years. 
 
 
 
 Those odds haven’t stopped wildlife agents from trying to rid their states of the scourge even before a federal program was in place. Although the traditional methods of hunting and trapping have helped, they have not stopped overall population growth. Practitioners are refining these tried-and-true methods while also exploring new ways to destroy larger numbers of pigs. 
 
 
 
 Trapping, for example, works well in areas with a low to medium density of pigs but has one major pitfall. Pigs travel in groups of eight to 15 called sounders, and trappers rarely catch all the members at once. Those that escape will learn to avoid traps in the future. Ditchkoff and Mark Smith, an animal specialist at Auburn University, teach landowners to practice whole sounder removal in which trappers patiently bait and rebait traps for days or weeks to improve their chance of capturing the entire group. “It's not how many pigs you remove,” Smith says. ”The real question is, How many pigs did you miss?” 
 
 
 
 
 
 Another popular way to rid a region of pigs is to hunt them from helicopters. Wildlife agents in Texas have found aerial shooting to be the most cost- effective method of pig control, even though the price can run as high as $600 an hour. Texas agents kill 25,000 pigs a year and half of them are shot at from the sky. 
 
 
 
 A team in New Mexico is using a hunting approach that employs a “Judas pig,” named for the biblical disciple who betrayed Jesus. They affix a radio collar to a pig and set it free, then follow it to its sounder. After a year of using this method state agents had eliminated 687 wild pigs and wiped them from 10 of the 17 counties where they had once roamed. 
 
 
 
 Neither aerial shooting nor the Judas pig technique is particularly well suited to the forests of the Southeast or the residential areas on which pigs have increasingly encroached. These limits are why Glen Gentry, an animal scientist at Louisiana State University, would prefer to poison pigs with sodium nitrite. “We can probably get to more of the group with toxicants,” he says. Ditchkoff agrees: “In Texas and Alabama, we need better tools than trapping,” he says. “We need toxicants and contraceptives.” 
 
 
 
 Gentry hopes to receive some of the money that will be available through the new federal program for his work in Louisiana, a state with half a million pigs. He needs to find a way to convince the pigs to eat bait laced with the bitter sodium nitrite compound and ensure that other animals will not be harmed if they accidentally consume it. Government researchers are also testing sodium nitrite as a pig poison, which has long been an effective form of eradication in Australia. If it works here, poison could be the most cost-effective solution of all. 
 
 
 
 In addition to devoting money to getting rid of pigs, the new federal program led by Nolte will spend $1.5 million to update estimates of the nation’s wild pig population and investigate the annual damage they inflict. Another $1.4 million will help monitor diseases like swine brucellosis and pseudorabies, both of which have been eradicated among domesticated pigs but threaten to make a comeback. The rest of the money will set up a centralized system to allow federal officials to better coordinate the projects in each state. 
 
 

 Sugar Land church calls for crossbow hunting as wild hogs threaten pumpkin patch 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Photo: Holy Cross Episcopal Church Image 1 of / 11 Caption Close Image 1 of 11 Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of wild hogs seen in the area. less Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of wild ... more Photo: Holy Cross Episcopal Church Image 2 of 11 Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of wild hogs seen in the area. less Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of ... more Photo: Holy Cross Episcopal Church Image 3 of 11 Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of wild hogs seen in the area. less Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of ... more Photo: Holy Cross Episcopal Church Image 4 of 11 Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of wild hogs seen in the area. less Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of ... more Photo: Holy Cross Episcopal Church Image 5 of 11 Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of wild hogs seen in the area. less Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of ... more Photo: Holy Cross Episcopal Church Image 6 of 11 Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of wild hogs seen in the area. less Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of ... more Photo: Holy Cross Episcopal Church Image 7 of 11 Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of wild hogs seen in the area. less Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of ... more Photo: Holy Cross Episcopal Church Image 8 of 11 Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of wild hogs seen in the area. less Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of ... more Photo: Holy Cross Episcopal Church Image 9 of 11 Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of wild hogs seen in the area. less Last year it took 50 people several hours to unload thousands of pumpkins brought in from New Mexico for the 2013 pumpkin patch. Organizers fear this years crop, arriving Oct 4, will be eaten by herds of ... more Photo: Holy Cross Episcopal Church Image 10 of 11 Described by some wildlife managers as "four-legged fire ants," Texas' population of economically and environmentally destructive feral hogs has exploded to an estimated at 2.6 million and continues expanding despite hunters annuallly taking 750,000 of the swine. Houston Chronicle photo by Shannon Tompkins less Described by some wildlife managers as "four-legged fire ants," Texas' population of economically and environmentally destructive feral hogs has exploded to an estimated at 2.6 million and continues expanding ... more Photo: Picasa Image 11 of 11 Sugar Land church calls for crossbow hunting as wild hogs threaten pumpkin patch 1 / 11 Back to Gallery 
 
 A Sugar Land church has called for hunters with crossbows to be brought in to kill wild hogs it fears will decimate their annual pumpkin patch. 
 
 Holy Cross Episcopal church on West River Park drive is due to take delivery of thousands of pumpkins from New Mexico. 
 
 The pumpkins will be laid out for sale in the biggest pumpkin patch in Fort Bend County as part of the church's annual fundraiser, starting Oct. 11 
 
 Organizers fear their money making event, which raises more than $30,000 each year, will be ruined because the pumpkins also make an attractive midnight snack for wild hogs living in nearby woods. 
 
 The City of Sugar Land employs private trappers who have caught some hogs. Now those trappers have recommended more drastic measures: hunters with crossbows. 
 
 Socct Thompson, rector at Holy Cross, says the church is for the hog hunt. 
 
 "My thinking is that if they should kill some down here on our land, the rest of the herd will come to realize this is a dangerous place for them to come and feed, then they'll stop coming in," he said. 
 
 Tens of thousands of people attend the three-week event. In addition to the pumpkins, the patch plays host to live music and dance troups. Last year, the even went off without a hitch – or hog. 
 
 But Thompson said the hogs already are digging up the church's field this fall because new housing construction in the area has pushed the hogs to move into new areas. 
 
 "What has intensified the issue is the housing developments ... the hogs are under more pressure to find food and there are thousands and thousands of these hogs," the Rector said. 
 
 However, the idea of turning city land over to hunters got short shrift from authorites who point to a city ordinance that prohibits the discharging of weapons within city limits. 
 
 "We are absolutely not going to set a hunter loose in areas that are in close proximity to residential areas to protect a pumpkin patch," said Sugar Land city spokesman Doug Adolph. 
 
 "There's really no guarantee of a kill shot with a cross bow, you could wound an animal and send it running into a residential area where they would go and create a real threat to human life," Adolph said. 
 
 The city has ruled out shotguns as well and suggests the church do more to protect its event through extra fencing, lighting or even a pumpkin patch guard to chase the hogs away. 
 
 Education programs around wildlife also tell people to limit food sources. Sugar Land officials say that the pumpkin patch will only make the problem of wild hogs worse. 
 
 "Essentially what they're going to do is put out a buffet for these hogs and other wildlife," said Adolph. "We're building community in areas where these wildlife exist, to some extent we need to learn to live with them." 
 
 The City says hunting would only be considered in extreme cases where there was a direct threat to human life. 

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– In the past three decades, wild pigs have been spreading across America like crazy—to the tune of 5 million of the porkers in 39 states. The pigs have been part of the landscape since the 1600s, when early settlers allowed them to roam; some escaped, though their numbers have long been relatively few and largely limited to the South. It's unclear what's behind the recent surge, but experts are working hard to find a way to contain them, Scientific American reports. Between the damage they cause and efforts to control them, wild pigs cost some $1.5 billion per year. In addition to eating crops, they can ruin fields by digging, threaten local species, and contaminate streams with their feces. "I've never seen any one species that can affect so many livelihoods and resources," says a Texas official. The federal government is directing $20 million toward thinning their ranks. The USDA program involves destroying the wild pig population in two states every few years, starting with the states that have the fewest pigs. Among techniques for doing so are trapping, shooting pigs from helicopters, and sending a radio-collared "Judas pig" to reveal the whereabouts of his group. Meanwhile, some experts are calling for poisoning the animals. In addition to the government program, locals are taking on the task: A church recently sought crossbow hunters to protect pumpkins in Texas, the Houston Chronicle reports, while a hunter in Nebraska recently killed a 400-pound pig; the Omaha World-Herald has a rather alarming picture. (On the bright side, at least the pigs here aren't radioactive.)