Feral Hogs Research Paper

The feral hogs, also known as the wild pigs are invasive animals that were introduced to North and South America. The feral hogs were brought to North America primarily by the colonies during their trade from Europe. They were first introduced to the southern part of the United States by the Spanish colonies. However, the feral hogs’ population got out of control and escaped to the eastern part of the US, which led to an increase of their numbers. The population of feral hogs kept increasing, and what helped their massive expansion was the illegal trade and translocations of feral hogs by humans. This led the population of feral hogs to expand up north to states like Michigan, North Dakota, and Ohio. There are almost 6 million feral hogs or wild pigs in 45 different states in the US. The population of …show more content…
There are different methods of controlling the feral hogs, some of them are lethal and others are not. The nonlethal methods can cost a large amount of money and are mostly ineffective, therefore, most farmers and agencies use the lethal methods such as trapping, poisoning, shooting, and fencing. The indigenous species can be affected by the controlling methods in various ways, this includes difficulty in breeding because of the poisoned food, being shot by accident, and falling into feral hogs traps. Nevertheless, these control methods can also have a positive effect on the indigenous species, because when the feral hogs increasing population is under control other species will be able to breed and produce the products that humans consume (ex: eggs, milk, meat). Due to the extreme damage caused by feral hogs, the United States congress issued $20 million to control the expansion and damage. In many times, when the feral hogs attack farm animals such as lambs and sheep they eat them without leaving any evidence, this leaves the framers with undefined numbers of the