The Southern Highland Reader

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK–Each year, wildlife managers in the Smokies hunt and kill wild hogs — wild boar, feral pigs and mixtures of the two — because the animals are non-native, somewhat dangerous and because they do a lot of environmental damage.

This year’s hunt netted over 500, which is the most in over two decades, according to a story in the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Excerpt:

Since the late 1950s, the park has removed almost 12,000 wild hogs. The animals are a target for control because they’re non-native, and they do considerable damage to the ecosystem by eating rare plants and salamander, defecating in streams and churning up the ground.

The park’s hog population traces back to the early 1920s, when a herd of European wild hogs escaped from a game reserve on Hooper’s Bald in Graham County, N.C. By the 1940s, the wild hogs had spread into other counties as well as the Smokies.

Kim DeLozier, chief wildlife biologist for the Smokies, said he believes the park’s hog population has been augmented in recent years by the addition of feral hogs – domestic pigs that have escaped or been released into the wild.

Read the whole piece here.

Tags: feral hogs, Graham County, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Knoxville, Knoxville News-Sentinel, smokies, wild hogs, wildlife managers

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