Wild Pigs on the March
They’re invading San Diego
Wild boar photo by U.S. Dept. of Fish & Game
They’re big … and you don’t want to have one coming after you!
They eat a lot, they breed a lot, and nobody’s quite sure why there are suddenly so many of them. They’re the wild boars of San Diego County, California.
One theory is that the pigs are descendants of a failed attempt to start a game-hunting ranch on Indian property. Another is that they’ve come north from Mexico.
They’re a problem to birds and other small animals, and they’re working their way through a lot of the local vegetation, since they eat like … well, you know.
Right now there’s a stand-off between the Forest Service, whose officials are proposing to “eradicate” the pigs, and animal protection groups who are crying foul. Killing the pigs, they argue, would include shooting many of them from helicopters, which leaves many of them wounded, suffering and dying a slow death.
Frankly, there’s no simple solution. But the problem is man-made, and more killing is never the answer to our problems.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.