For years, Pennsylvania’s scattered wild pig population has been of little interest to anyone except hunters – who pursued pockets of porkers as an occasional change from more common game – and farmers – who withstood crop damage from feral hogs along with other wildlife.

But, the state’s free-roaming pig population is getting a closer look from a public/private task force focused on health threats wild pigs may pose to livestock and humans.

The Wildlife Services Division of the federal Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Inspection Service will trap and shoot wild pigs in three parts of Pennsylvania this month to collect blood and tissue to be tested for disease in an effort funded by $60,000 in grants from the USDA and Pennsylvania Pork Producers Council. Samples will be tested by Penn State and University of Pennsylvania labs.

The study comes on the heels of a Pennsylvania Game Commission report that documents the presence of wild hogs in 11 counties – including Cambria, Somerset, Bedford and Indiana – and confirms breeding in both Cambria and Bedford counties.

The report also includes evidence that hogs roamed free in at least four other counties, but are apparently not found there today.

“I think everybody is concerned that we don’t really know how widespread the problem is,” said Dave Wolfgang, extension veterinarian in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. “They are most concerned about, one, some animal health issues concerned with them; two, some public health issues of a hunter type; and three, that they’re a very invasive species that can cause a lot of damage.”

One of the problems concerning wild pig populations is a lack of responsibility. Because they are classified as a farm animal, the Pennsylvania Game Commission has no authority over either the pigs or those who hunt them.

“It’s just a matter of not having jurisdiction for them,” game commission press secretary Jerry Feaser said. “We are opposed to them being in the wild. We are concerned about disease. We are concerned about damage to habitat. But, they’re not defined as a wild bird or mammal in terms of the Game and Wildlife Code. They are defined as porcine, which is strictly under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture.”

But those who worry about the problems associated with wild hogs also worry that hunters might come to like them.

“In Florida, wild hogs are the No. 1 game species,” Harris Glass, state director of USDA Wildlife Services in Harrisburg, said in a prepared statement. “They sell more licenses for hunting hogs than they do for deer. In the South, there is a whole culture built around hog hunting. If we get to that point in Pennsylvania, we are just not going to be able to stop it.”

Hunters might welcome another big-game animal, Glass said, but wild pigs are more trouble than they are worth. He said half the wild pigs tested in the South are found to carry disease, and all of them cause environmental damage ranging from soil erosion, damage to native plants to directly killing and eating small and young animals, including lambs, goats and ground-nesting birds such as wild turkeys and grouse.

“This is really a biosecurity issue,” he said. “And wild hogs are so detrimental to the habitat. It would be really devastating to wildlife if these animals become established across Pennsylvania. In Texas, for example, damages caused by wild hogs run in the millions of dollars annually, and USDA has had to resort to aerial gunning to control the population.”

But, Wolfgang said the concerns about wild pigs extend beyond their presence in Pennsylvania. As they become more popular as a game animal, he said, more Pennsylvanians are traveling to the South to hunt them.

When those hunters bring back their pigs, they may also be bringing back illnesses.

“That’s something that’s not on our radar screen, and we want to make people aware of it,” he said. “People don’t think about it, go to Alabama or Georgia on a pig hunt, and the next thing you know they are sick. We don’t want those diseases in Pennsylvania.”

According to the game commission, the source of Pennsylvania’s wild pigs is escapees from game farms. Wolfgang agrees.

“If you introduce them into a hunting preserve, it is almost impossible to keep them in a fence,” he said. “It’s very difficult to maintain them in a habitat like that.”

 Information: Dave Wolfgang at 863-5849 or drw12@psu.edu.