It’s been a little while since I’ve posted up a Porcine Press news roundup, but that doesn’t mean the pigs haven’t been in the news lately. They’re still rooting up landscaping, eating crops, and chasing Chinese villagers. They’re also showing up in more places where they probably shouldn’t be…
… such as, the Adirondack mountains in New York. According to this article in the Syracuse Post Standard, the hogs are spreading across New York, and are now being spotted in the Adirondacks and nearby towns.
“We’ve had some reports,” said Ed Reed, a wildlife biologist for the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Region 5, which covers Saratoga County and the northeast corner of the state, according a recent story in The Times Union newspaper in Albany.
Wild boars have been seen alongside a road in Argyle and by kayakers near Shushan, the newspaper reported.
In Michigan, the wild boar and feral hogs have become a hot topic among politicians and hunters. A large percentage of the blame for the spread of hogs in that state has been laid at the doorstep of hunting preserves, and new legislation was imposed this spring to ban the possession of wild swine, regardless of whether they’re enclosed in a pen or not. The ban has been postponed until at least October, but if nothing changes, the preserve owners will have to remove all wild boar from their properties by the end of March, 2012. I’ve tried to keep up with this issue here on the Hog Blog, but you can read more about this over at MLIVE.com.
Here in CA, the hogs haven’t been quiet either, and a 69 year-old hunter was attacked up near Lake Sonoma (Sonoma county) last week. Thanks to the Hog Blog readers who took the time to send links to this story when it first happened. According to this most recent report from Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the hunter, Ernie Sanders, was released from the hospital last Thursday, a day after his hog hunt turned ugly. Sanders cornered a wounded hog that turned and attacked him, biting his hands, leg, and knees. According to the article, other members of the hunting party killed the hog.
The hogs keep coming up on the short end of the stick.
In this article, sent along by our British correspondent (the Suburban Bushwhacker), an unusual, toxic seaweed is blamed for the mysterious deaths of 15 wild boar along the French coast. The concerns are that the killer seaweed is caused by farm runoff, and it may be dangerous to more than just wild pigs.
Studies have concluded that the weed, though present naturally, has been prompted to swell to gigantic proportions by the nitrogen flowing into estuaries from intensive pig and cereals farms in central Brittany.
The five dead boar, two adults and three babies, were found lying on the mud of a river estuary at Morieux, near Saint-Brieuc yesterday morning. Eight dead animals were found nearby on Sunday and two others on 7 July.
“We are very worried. How could we be anything other than worried when animals are being found dead?” said the mayor of Morieux, Jean-Pierre Briens.
The issue is creating quite a stir among the environmentalist community, as well as between other governments. After reading the article and some others about the same issue, I can’t blame them.
I’m still waiting to read about wild hogs showing up in Alaska, and as soon as it happens I can promise I’ll write about it right here! In the meantime, that’s the Porcine Press for today.
