Feral hogs plague Florida residents

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Feb. 3 (UPI) -- Feral hogs in Florida are extending their range, wrecking suburban lawns, destroying crops and spreading disease, officials said.

Since being released by early explorers almost 500 years ago, they have extended their range enormously in the last few decades, aided by hunters who illegally truck them into new territory as game animals, expanding from 17 states in 1982 to 37 states today, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Wednesday.

In Palm Beach Gardens, northwest of West Palm Beach, a pack of the feral hogs crossed an emptied canal last year and began digging up lawns looking for food.

"They would just start rooting, and their nose is like a bulldozer," resident James Moser said. "A whole family will come over, and dig holes about three inches deep, like craters. In one night, they'll do a whole yard."

Also called wild pigs and razorbacks, the animals are hated by farmers for consuming crops and killing livestock.

Homeowners, especially those who live near wilderness areas, are awakened to find costly landscaping uprooted and trampled.

"The Everglades are packed with them," Bryan Swanson, owner of All Star Animal Removal, said. "It's getting worse. We're getting a lot more calls from people of hogs destroying their property."

The animals that can reproduce at a rapid rate; a female pig can give birth at the age of 10 months and can produce litters of four or five piglets twice a year.

"These animals have the greatest reproductive rate of any large animal on earth," Stephen Ditchkoff, a professor of wildlife ecology and management at Auburn University, said. "They'll consume just about anything. They're good at utilizing a wide range of food sources, and as a result, they're very successful as a species."