USDA Wildlife Services discusses feral hog prevention methods

The city of Graham, in partnership with the local Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Warden and a contractor with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), hosted a town hall meeting Thursday discussing feral hogs and the damage they have caused within the city. Damage Management Urban Biologist Adam Henry with the USDA Wildlife Services spoke at the meeting on lethal and nonlethal solutions to address feral hogs within the community.

The Graham Police Department made a post on their social media page Wednesday, May 25, stating they were developing a solution to address the increasing feral hog problem within the city of Graham.

According to Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, of the four-to-five million feral hogs in the United States, an estimated 2.6 million reside in the state of Texas and can be found in 99% of its counties. The extension service states that feral hogs cause an estimated $52 million in damages to the Texas agricultural enterprises each year as well as damage to landscapes in both suburban and rural areas.

In the town hall meeting held Thursday, June 6 at North Central Texas College, Henry stated the USDA Wildlife Service group was brought in by the city to address the problems of feral hogs and advised residents having problems to reach out to GPD.

“From a city standpoint, certainly anybody in town that has a problem currently, that’s what our relationship with the city is, is to offer assistance,” he said. “I know there’s some private trappers working in town that some landowners have used. But certainly I would encourage you as a landowner inside city limits to reach out to the chief of police and police department and leave your contact information because that’s what we’re here to do is to offer some assistance in town to help trap those pigs. Trapping is a right now solution for a potential forever problem. That’s why we have all of the non-lethal solutions and things that you can do on your landscape to help curtail the pigs on this small landscape in town.”

For the full story, see the Wednesday, June 22 edition of The Graham Leader.