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Wild Pigs are a Threat for Florida's Rangelands
July, 2022
Bri Rvyer, Graduate Student, UF/IFAS Range Cattle Research & Education
Center;
Dr. Hance Ellington,
Asst. Professor, UF/IFAS Range Cattle
Research & Education Center
It can happen to anyone - you’re inspecting a fence
line or moving cattle, and you find a patch of pitted and overturned
pasture. Those wild pigs are at it again, rooting up the soil and destroying
your property! You might be surprised to learn how complex and far-reaching
this problem really is.
Figure 1: Photo of wild pigs caught
on a trail camera at the Range Cattle Research and Education Center.
First introduced to Florida about 500 years ago,
invasive wild pigs (Sus scrofa; Figure 1) are a generalist species,
meaning they can survive in a wide variety of habitats. Nowadays, there are
more than 500,000 wild pigs in Florida. The term “wild pig” refers to any
pig outside of a fence (Figure 1). Wild pigs are also referred to as wild
hogs, feral pigs, feral hogs, and wild boar, but we will call them wild pigs
here for consistency. Wild pigs primarily eat vegetation, but will also eat
invertebrates, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. They’ve even been
known to consume young livestock. Wild pigs are prolific breeders, producing
up to 2 litters of 1-12 piglets per year, and they can be ready to reproduce
as young as 1 year old. You can often find wild pigs traveling in sounders
which are social groups consisting of related females and their young. Male
wild pigs often travel the landscape on their own.
Wild pigs are a major concern for landowners in Florida
as they devalue rangelands with their rooting, causing a loss of
productivity. Not only do they root and tear up the pastures, but they also
create large muddy puddles called wallows in order to regulate their
temperature in the hot Florida summers. These wallows can be a point of
transmission for the many diseases wild pigs can carry, such as brucellosis,
salmonellosis, and pseudorabies, along with many parasites like ticks, lice,
fleas, and various worms. When wild pigs move into your rangelands, they
bring with them many threats to livestock and land.
One of the main predators of wild pigs in Florida is
humans which means we are a main part of the solution to the problem of wild
pigs. The most effective long-term method of wild pig control is
whole-sounder trapping, which requires a trapping strategy and plenty of
patience and persistence. Choosing the correct trap placement in areas with
high wild pig use, pre-baiting traps to acclimate the wild pigs to its
presence, monitoring the traps, and adjusting techniques as needed are all
important factors in trapping success. There are wide variety of trap
styles, but traps that are remotely activated or allow for entry after being
sprung are the best at capturing the whole sounder. Hunting wild pigs is not
as effective as whole-sounder removal and is not typically considered a
long-term solution. Furthermore, hunting or single-animal trapping could
even be counter-productive as unharvested individuals within a sounder
become educated to hunter behavior or traps and are more difficult to
harvest in the future.
Florida is a beautiful state with a large diversity of
wildlife. Florida’s grazing lands are productive and support many people and
their livestock, but wild pigs can threaten this way of life. Wild pigs
bring disease and damage to grazing lands and must be controlled to mitigate
the negative effects of their presence across the state. With a variety of
trapping solutions, we can do our part to help ourselves and our neighbors
manage invasive wild pigs and improve our pastures.
To learn more about wild pig trapping, you can check
out this video;
https://youtu.be/OiKoOAy6_OA or this UF/IFAS extension document;
https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/uw440.