Water Shed Post Reports: This week, federal wildlife agents armed with cameras and sniper rifles are patrolling New York State skies by helicopter, hoping for a glimpse of wild pigs. It’s the latest mission in an ongoing battle to rid the state of feral swine, before most New Yorkers even realize the state has a pig problem. It’s far too late for Texas, whose $500-million-a-year feral pig problem has been dubbed the “aporkalypse.” In Florida, the pestilential pigs are found in every county, and have even destroyed a $16 million F-16 fighter plane. Pigs are a moot point in Mississippi, where experts say it’s “only a matter of time” before feral swine rut and root their way from rural Clay County to the far corners of the state.
But it might not be too late for New York, according to the handful of state and federal regulators whose task it is to try to keep feral swine from getting established in the Empire State.
From Jan. 28 through Feb. 7, a helicopter crew from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is surveying several areas known to be home to feral swine, including part of Delaware and Sullivan counties. If they spot any feral pigs on land they are surveying, and if the landowner has already given them permission, they will shoot the animals from the air.
Kelly Stang, wildlife biologist for the New York State Department of Conservation (DEC), said that to her knowledge, it’s the first time in New York State history that government officials have set out to hunt animals by helicopter. But the USDA crew has flown similar missions all across the East Coast.
The main purpose of the helicopter flights is not to hunt the hogs, but to find out more about the wily animals and their movements across the landscape. With trees bare and snow on the ground, torn-up ruts in the earth left by foraging swine should be easier to spot.
“The crew that’s doing it, all they do is aerial operations,” Stang said. “The main goal is to survey — to see if we can find any from the air, where are they, how many. If they do have the opportunity to shoot them, they will take that shot.”
Any pig that escapes captivity can go feral, but the main culprit is the Eurasian boar: a furry, tusked ancestor of the domestic pig that can interbreed freely with its captive cousins, and shares the same species, Sus scrofa. In the wild, they are smart, elusive, quick to multiply, and incredibly destructive.
Feral swine were first found in New York State in 2008. According to a 2012 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), feral swine have since established four separate breeding populations in the state, and span six counties: Delaware, Sullivan, Onandaga, Tioga, Cortland and Clinton. Most of the state’s feral pigs are descended from Eurasian boars, and their breeding populations are all close to enclosed private ranges where boars are raised for hunting. Continue reading….
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