On the fringes of San Antonio city limits, feral hogs are becoming an expensive issue for the city’s parks department, digging up native plants and digging pits to wallow in. Now city officials aren’t oinking around with them anymore.
Once mostly a rural problem, the hairy beasts are encroaching more and more on city life around the state as the state’s feral hog population continues to boom.
Researchers have estimated that wild hogs cause billions of dollars in damages across the country annually. There are more than 2.6 million wild hogs estimated to be residing in Texas, according to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department.
In an effort to keep the hogs away from city residents and property, the San Antonio City Council on Thursday approved a contract worth $35,000 annually for LMR Hog Trappers to trap and remove feral hogs. With two, one-year renewal options, the city is estimating a total cost of $175,000 to get the problem under control.
“Feral hogs have caused damage to city property and pose a health and safety concern to the community,” the city stated in its agenda item.
While this isn’t the city’s first feral hog-trapping contract, this one is larger than past contracts and “is a little bit broader in scope,” said Parks and Recreation Department Natural Resources Manager Grant Ellis.
“This one allows us more flexibility in the Parks Department to work with the contractor to move traps around from park to park or location to location as is needed,” Ellis said. “It also includes [the San Antonio Police Department] and Animal Care Services in the contract for broader reach.”
The hogs will be trapped and removed, exterminated, and their meat processed, Ellis said. The contract stipulates that any proceeds the contractor receives from processing the hogs will be donated to the San Antonio Food Bank, he added.
The contract is an extra precaution to keep park visitors safe, Ellis said. While there haven’t been any reported incidents of park visitors being harmed by feral hogs, keeping the population in check is important, he added.
Feral hog populations are growing throughout the state and are expanding into new areas, said Mikayla Killam, a wildlife damage management program specialist for the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. Killam added that hogs reproduce at an early age (6 months), often (can be multiple times per year), and in large quantities (average of four to six piglets per litter).
“We regularly hear about issues with feral hogs in urban and suburban areas,” she told the San Antonio Report.
Feral hogs are a non-native invasive species that were introduced to the area during European exploration. Texas’ ecosystem is not designed to support them, its wildlife are not designed to compete with them, and they have few predators, Killam said.
Not only do feral hogs carry diseases that are transmissible to humans, native wildlife, pets and livestock, but their foraging and wallowing behaviors damage lawns, plants, irrigation systems, sports fields and crops, she added.
“In more natural areas, their foraging and wallowing habits destroy native plants which can cause increases in erosion and sedimentation,” Killam said. “They also require access to water for temperature control and deposit large quantities of fecal matter into bodies of water, which can result in high enough levels of E. coli to make the area unsafe for human recreation.”
As an unprotected, exotic, non-game animal, feral hogs may be hunted by any means or methods at any time of year within the state of Texas, said Kirk McDonnell, a Texas Parks & Wildlife Department spokesman. The Texas Parks & Wildlife Department does not manage or regulate feral hogs, and no hunting license is needed to hunt them on private property as long as landowner permission has been granted, he added.
San Antonio residents should still note, however, that under reckless shooting laws, it is illegal to discharge a gun on your property in Texas unless you are outside of city limits, or if you have a tract of land at least 10 acres in size.
The city’s contractor, LMR Hog Trappers, is based in Lytle, about 25 miles southwest of San Antonio. Ellis said the company will set traps up around dense areas near parks where the hogs are known to roam, Ellis said. Depending on the size of the trap, trappers can snag 10 to 15 hogs at a time, he said.
LMR Hog Trappers did not return calls from the San Antonio Report seeking additional information.
