By Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service

The United States has a population problem and it's not people. It's pigs. Wild pigs.

Feral hogs have been around since Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto brought their ancestors to the New World in 1539. But over the last 20 years their numbers and range have exploded. Wildlife experts put their numbers at between 2 million and 6 million. In 1982, they were in 17 states. Today, they are in 44, and in 21 of those states their population is large enough that the hogs can't be eradicated. In Florida they have been documented in every county, and in Texas they are in almost every county.

These are not the cute little pigs of storybook and cartoon. They are big ― up to 750 pounds. And, as Scripps Howard News Service reporters Isaac Wolf and Jason Bartz found in researching them, enormously destructive.

They have voracious appetites and not just for plants. They also eat sheep, cattle, goats and chickens. Like the deer before them, they are increasingly drawn to the lush landscaping and gardens of the suburbs. Unlike the deer, they leave behind a torn up mess.

The wild hogs each year do an estimated $800 million in property and crop damage and are involved in 27,000 collisions with autos. And they are prone to diseases that can spread to domestic livestock.

One factor in the spread of the feral hogs is that hunters truck them from Texas and Florida, releasing them into the wild or on private game reserves for hunting. The hogs that escape spread and breed. There are federal rules against transporting feral hogs but they are widely ignored. Other than that, there is no national policy on preventing their proliferation. What little control there is of their numbers is largely up to a patchwork of state hunting laws.

Various means have been suggested for controlling the feral hog population ― stepped up hunting, male birth control, coordinated eradication campaigns ― but little action has been taken. In the meantime, the wild pigs eat and breed and eat.