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A five-year program to help eradicate invasive feral hogs and coyotes nationwide has only one year left to go, but New Mexican officials say the hogs are still a significant problem.
Feral hogs cause about $1.5 billion in damages nationwide, with $800 million in direct damage to agriculture, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures. In response to the growing threat of these wild animals, the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service began a five-year eradication program in 2012 with an annual budget of $1 million. Funding for the program, which will end in Sept. 2018, is now only $400,000 per year. If the USDA wants to keep working on the program after that, more funding will have to be secured, Adrian Hedden reports for the Carlsbad Current-Argus.
The pigs can be more than 1,000 lbs. and six feet long, and "They're just mean animals," New Mexico State University agriculture extension agent Woods Houghton told Hedden. "They can sure eat up a freshly planted field easily. They get everything you planted. It's unbelievable what they can do to an alfalfa field."
While thousands of hogs have been removed by the program the pigs breed all year, and sows can give birth to a litter of three to 18 piglets at just four to five months old. USDA District Supervisor for Wildlife Services Brian Archuleta said that "exponential population growth is a real possibility."
from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2nZ0hIV Feral hog eradication program ending soon; more funding needed - Entrepreneur Generations
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