Texas AgriLife Extension’s state wildlife services will be spending the Texas Department of Agriculture grant to cut down on the hogs across the state, said Randy Smith, wildlife biologist in San Antonio.
He said it would include Hill, Navarro and Matagorda counties, which were used in a 2007 pilot program.
“I don’t know specifically which counties will benefit, but they were part of the study last year, and they will continue to receive some benefit from it,” Smith said.
The 80th Texas Legislature allocated $1 million to the TDA following a $500,000 pilot program funded by the 79th Legislature. The pilot program was administered by the extension service and Texas Tech University through a 2006-07 TDA grant. It provided technical assistance to landowners in the three counties, and promoted educational events for other landowners statewide.
The $1 million, allocated over the next two years in $500,000 increments, will apply feral hog control techniques implemented last year, where 3,700 wild swine were trapped and destroyed, TDA spokesman Bryan Black said. The TDA estimated eradication of wild hogs saved agricultural producers and landowners nearly $3 million in losses, Black said.
Wildlife biologists estimate more than 2 million wild hogs inhabit the state. The hogs wreak havoc on property, livestock, crops and pastures, costing agricultural producers statewide a whopping $52 million in actual economic damages.
“They learned a lot from the study last year, so they are expanding those techniques to other areas of the state to figure out how we are going to get control of this feral hog population that is exploding,” Black said.
Money will be used to hire four to six employees to be stationed at various areas around the state, as well as purchasing equipment and offsetting costs of current equipment used, Smith said.
“Basically, a million dollars may sound like a lot to a lot of people, but really it doesn’t go very far when you are talking about the size of Texas,” said Smith, adding that he did not know at this point whether Bell, Milam, Falls, Coryell and Lampasas counties would benefit from the program.
“The goal of this project is to get a good handle on pre-damage and post-damage,” Smith said. “We want to be able to work in areas where we have a good handle on the amount of damage the hogs have done prior to us going in and removing them, and then we want to go back and see how much damage that’s created afterwards. That will allow us to be able to present to the Legislature, that by using this amount of money in this area, we saved the property owners this amount of dollars. That is the whole goal of this, we want to be able to measure the worth.”
In the three counties, wildlife services used a helicopter to slaughter the wild hogs but the majority of eradication was done with employees on the ground using traps, Smith said.
Among methods being tested is distributing hog bait laced with birth control chemicals, said Jon Gersbach, county agent for ag and natural resources with Texas AgriLife Extension in Milam County. The feral hog problem in Milam County is “huge” especially among grain producers and in hay meadows, he said.
