Feral Pigs in New York State

The New York Times ran an article (here) on March 11, 2012 about the wild-living pig problem in New York's Champlain Valley. These pigs now occupy five of the state's sixty-two counties and appear to be thriving in this agricultural region. The article, by Lisa Foderaro, notes the fear that these animals might eventually reach Adirondack Park, where they could do tremendous damage to this wilderness area.

Much of the article concerns the difficulties involved in capturing these pigs, seen in this New York State Department of Environmental Conservation night-vision photo. The source of these animals is unknown, but it is likely that these wild-living pigs are a mix of domestic livestock or pet pigs that escaped or were released and Eurasian wild boars brought to the state as a game animal. In Pig I devote my concluding chapter to wild-living pigs, a growing problem throughout the United States, as marking the return of the repressed. Given what I've learned about wild-living pigs, I'm not all that optimistic about the long-term success of efforts to control these animals in rural, agricultural areas of New York.