It was a classic moment of old boy legislative cute on Thursday in Dan Fabian's Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee: after Fosston Republican Steve Green's young grandson presented on HF3874, a bill that would allow hunters to keep the carcasses of feral swine they shoot.
The measure has no Senate companion, and with the deadline for bills fast approaching, we're curious the committee's time was spent on this issue. Unfortunately, after watching the ill-informed responses to many of the committee members to the presentation on HF3874, Bluestem can foresee this ill-conceived approach to feral swine sneaking into conference committee report.
The approach is ill-conceived primarily on two accounts: first, by allowing hunters to keep the feral swine meat, it whets the appetite for feral swine hunting and thus the market for illegal importation of the invasive species. Second, feral swine travel in groups called sounders; when individual sounder members are picked off, the intelligent animals quickly adapt to outwit hunters and avoid humans.
There's the added irony that so many Republicans criticizing the notion that Minnesotans under voting ago might be able to have a voice in policy making. Perhaps that only applies to those whose grandparents aren't lawmakers. As we noted in Priorities: state lawmaker dares to allude to March For Our Lives on Minnesota House floor, there's no time for those kids in the Minnesota House.
An epic failure to communicate facts
Since this language is Representative Green's bill, we'll treat it as such in this discussion. Green stated during the testimony that his bill would help bring attention to this issue. This implies that the rest of the state is as ignorant about this issue as most of the committee. Utter balderdash.
In September 2015, the Pioneer Press reported in Why you can shoot feral hogs in Wisconsin but not Minnesota:
After reports of feral pigs in northwestern Wisconsin, the state’s Department of Natural Resources asked hunters and landowners last week to shoot the animals — considered an environmental wrecking ball — on sight.
The standing orders are a bit different in Minnesota, where it became illegal last year to hunt feral swine, and officials would prefer farmers who spot them pick up the phone before pulling the trigger.
I spoke with Steve Merchant, wildlife population and regulation program manager for the Minnesota DNR, about the animals and the agency’s approach to dealing with them.
Q: So what are feral hogs?
A: Feral hogs are simply domesticated pigs that have escaped captivity and are living and breeding in the wild. That’s the differentiation between a European wild boar, which is a different species.
They very quickly revert to a wild-looking creature that has hair. They get longer and leaner. The “Arkansas Razorbacks,” for instance — that’s a feral hog.
Q: Why are they a problem?
A: They’re very destructive animals, and they cause a great deal of economic and environmental damage. In California and Texas, they’re spending millions and millions of dollars to try to control these things.
They’ll eat crops. Pigs root — they do a lot of digging with their tusks and their snouts. They also like to wallow. They create a lot of soil disturbances.
Q: Are they in Minnesota?
A: As far as we know, we do not have a breeding population of feral pigs. We’ve never documented breeding outside of captivity, and we’d like to keep it that way.
On a couple occasions, it’s just been pigs that have gotten away from people. The potbelly pig is the one that tends to show up the most. It’s only been a couple of times, but it appears to be people who have these animals for pets, and then they reach sexual maturity and they realize they don’t make as good of pets as they did when they were little. ...
Q: What’s going on in Wisconsin?
A: They are actually trying to eradicate them from the wild. They’ve been doing some aggressive removal of their known feral population. I think they’re making inroads.
Q: How [Wisconsin's approach] does that differ from Minnesota?
We are taking a different tack on that, because a lot of states that deal with these told us that when hunters are out in the field see them and shoot them, it actually makes the pig really wise and makes it really difficult for the professionals to come in and remove them.
That’s why we had the law (which did not previous address feral hogs) changed. We would prefer people not shoot them. We prefer they contact us.
Simply hunting them down doesn’t really remove them, and in effect it sort of provides a sport that some people tend to like, so they actually develop a constituency. We’re trying to avoid that.
Minnesota wasn't the only state to limit hunting feral swine that year. The Kansas City Star reported in 2016's Wanting to kill wild pigs itself, Missouri bans public hog hunting:
Wild pigs roaming Missouri have meant hog heaven for hunters and purgatory for state officials who wish to destroy the swine.
You might think that the state would want as many people out hunting hogs as possible, but you’d be wrong.
The Missouri Department of Conservation on Friday banned the hunting of feral hogs on the 1,000 or so conservation areas in the state.
Hunters actually make it more difficult for the state to kill feral hogs, the Conservation Department says.
Here’s why:
The state tries to lure groups of hogs to a trapping area with cracked corn. Pigs see a free meal, and private hunters see a ready-made hunting ground. Hunters will “take out a couple, and the rest scatter,” said department spokesman Joe Jerek.
The Missouri conservation staffers prefer to catch and kill pigs in groups, known as “sounders,” not go running around rural Missouri chasing after hogs they thought they were about to catch.
Hunters also sometimes illegally catch and move feral hogs around the state in order to give themselves more places and pigs to hunt.
Besides being destructive and smart, the pigs are prodigious breeders, and a sounder needs very little time to replenish itself and then some. . .
In short, the bill would likely make feral swine eradication more difficult, rather than address the problem when feral swine arrive in Minnesota.
Every county in Alabama is home to feral swine and recreational hunting doesn't make a dent in their numbers, as the Tuscaloosa News reported in March 27's Feral hogs tough to contain and eradicate:
“Hunting hogs is a recreational activity, it is not an effective management tool,” [Chuck Sykes, director of the game department’s wildlife and freshwater fisheries division] said. “Show me a credible study that says hunting is effective, and I’ll reconsider. But I’ve been doing this a long time, I’ve been there and done that. You can’t blow smoke up my skirt and convince me that hunting hogs is an effective tool.
If only members of the Minnesota House Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee possessed Mr. Sykes' critical thinking skills and experience.
Bluestem, too, loves bacon, but we don't want policy passed that endangers the wonderful stuff we obtain from Prairie Point Farm in rural Big Stone County. Those pampered pigs shouldn't be exposed to the diseases feral swine carry.
While Steve Green might not have been watching this issue, the DNR continues to keep a watchful eye out for feral swine. In the spring of 2017, the Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies' Midwest Ad‐hoc Feral Swine Committee (MFSC) yearly report noted:
In 2016 Minnesota is still feral swine free. We do have instances of escaped domestic swine “at large”. A total of 9
swine at large complaints were investigated up to October of 2016. We were successful in implementing 2015
legislation that gave authority to the Department of Natural Resources to remove swine allowed to be living in the wild. USDA Wildlife Services staff removed 7 swine that had been at large and allowed to be living in the wild. We are reliant on USDA Wildlife Services to conduct all swine removal activities. Our DNR Division of Fish and Wildlife is funded by license fees so we do not have a funding mechanism to remove swine at large. A feral swine committee is working ondrafting a feral swine response plan for the state with lessons learned from our first year of implementing our removal authority under state statute. The committee is composed of staff from Minnesota DNR Division of Fish & Wildlife andEcological & Water Resources, USDA Wildlife Services, and Minnesota Board of Animal Health.
At the bottom of this post, we embed the full report by the Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies' Midwest Ad‐hoc Feral Swine Committee (MFSC) so readers get an idea about what states are doing to eradicate feral swine.
The concern expressed by committee member Rick Hansen, DFL-S. St. Paul, that the bill would incentivize importing feral swine to the state is grounded in reality, as are his concerns about funding for feral swine eradication (illustrated by Nelson's remarks above).
Farm Journal's Ag Web reported earlier this year in Pigs Don't Fly: Feral Hog Spread Is A Man-Made Mess:
Hidden inside covered trailers or hauled in plain sight under the cover of darkness, wild pigs are on the move. Even trussed in car trunks, stuffed in dog boxes, stretched across back seats, or openly sold on Facebook, wild pigs often march to a man-made beat. Bottom line: The spread of 6.3 million wild pigs across the United States is assisted by rubber tires.
Illegal transport is a major cause of increased wild pig presence, an advance which contributes to an annual multi-billion dollar bill. Wild pigs cause up to $2.5 billion in damage to the U.S. economy each year and $1 billion of the total is exclusive to agriculture. Based on anecdotes and observation, wildlife personnel have long suspected illegal transport as a major catalyst of wild pig dispersal. Through advances in genetic technology, intuition is being confirmed with hard evidence: The most reproductively capable large animal in North America is hitching a human ride. . . .
Hot on the trail of wild pig movement, Bronson Strickland is cooperating with scientists using genetic testing to prove that adjacent populations are often unrelated. Strickland, a wildlife biologist and wildlife management specialist with Mississippi State University Extension, says illegal releases occur under the radar, but technology is revealing the physical proof of unrelated sounders stretching from Florida to California.
Still in the rudimentary stages of testing, genetic technology is documenting the unnatural spread of pigs, according to Strickland: “We’re beginning to see concrete proof of what we’ve believed for a long time. Populations don’t just spring up overnight in Midwest states like Illinois or Ohio.” . . .
Outlaws
Who are the people physically trapping, transporting and releasing the pigs? Strickland points to a small group of outlaw hunters: “I’m not lumping anybody in because it’s a very small group engaging in illegal releases. These people want pigs in every county like we have deer in every county. It’s totally destructive.”
Yet, a few outlaws can ramp up an entire population of wild pigs. “They sneak pigs into a new area and those pigs quickly out-compete many of the native wildlife species we cherish,” he adds. . . .
Again, 6.3 million wild pigs and possibly $2.5 billion in damage ($1 billion directly to agriculture) attest to the dire consequences of illegal wild pig transport. “Pigs don’t fly and we know how they’re getting here. We don’t have a hog hunting tradition yet and we don’t want one,” Backs adds. “Our Midwest pig problems are relatively small and we want to keep them that way.”
One of the committee members quipped about whether they'd get bacon if the language became law. We're more sympathetic to the concerns the USDA raised in 2014's We Can't Barbecue Our Way Out: Why Feral Swine Management Requires a National Approach:
Wild boar, razorback, feral hog, wild pig — these are just some of the names we attribute to one of the most destructive and formidable invasive species in the United States. Feral swine adapt to just about any habitat, have few natural enemies, and reproduce at high rates. As such, their population is growing rapidly nationwide. At 5 million animals and counting, feral swine are now found in at least 39 States and cause approximately $1.5 billion in damages and control costs each year. Their damage is diverse and includes destroying native habitats and crops, eating endangered species, and spreading disease. Natural resource managers, researchers and academics nationwide are grappling with how best to address the challenges of feral swine management.
Feral swine are hunted by the public in some States for recreational purposes; but hunting will not solve our country’s feral swine problems.
“Feral swine don’t know boundaries and what happens in one State affects neighboring States,” states APHIS’ new national feral swine initiative coordinator Dr. Dale Nolte. “Only through a concerted, comprehensive effort with the public and our State and Federal partners can we begin to turn the tide on feral swine expansion and reduce their negative impacts to our economy and environment.” . . .
APHIS is field testing a new anti-hog poison in 2018. We're still looking to see if the USDA continues to fund a national-regional approach to the problem.
Here's the video of the hearing for the bill (the embedded YouTube will scroll forward to the beginning of the bill hearing):
Here's the Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies' Midwest Ad‐hoc Feral Swine Committee (MFSC) yearly report:
Midwest Ad‐hoc Feral Swine Committee (MFSC) yearly report 2017 by Sally Jo Sorensen on Scribd
Photo: Feral swine will eat fawns and other small wildlife, as well as carrying diseases that harm livestock and people. Via Michigan United Conservation Clubs.
If you appreciate our posts and original analysis, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post. Those wishing to make a small ongoing monthly contribution should click on the paypal subscription button.
Or you can contribute via this link to paypal; use email [email protected] as recipient.
Comments