CONCORD, N.H. - Retired wildlife biologist Becky Field was on high alert
as she drove down Interstate 89 on a dark night two years ago. She gripped
the steering wheel tightly, ready to swerve if a moose crossed her path.
When a state trooper told her that it was actually a wild boar that crashed
into her Toyota Prius and pushed it off the highway, her first thought was
"That's impossible."
At the time, the state Fish and Game department said the animal likely
escaped from a wild game park and that the state didn't have an established
wild boar population. But that has changed, and state officials say now
everyone should be on alert.
Feral swine have been expanding their range in the United States in the past
few decades and are well-established in southern states, California and
Texas, where they've devastated crops and wildlife habitat with their
voracious rooting and wallowing. There have been sporadic sightings in New
Hampshire for more than a century, but the state only recently confirmed a
significant population.
Mark Ellingwood, a Fish and Game wildlife biologist, estimates there are
fewer than 500 feral hogs in the state, mostly in Grafton, Sullivan and
Cheshire counties, but damage complaints and sightings are on the rise. In
addition to property damage -- the swine can dig two-foot-deep gouges with
their snouts -- the state is concerned that the boars will out-compete
native wildlife for food given that they multiply rapidly and will consume
nearly anything they come across, Ellingwood said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been helping landowners who have had
property damaged by wild boars through trapping and shooting, while state
officials try to raise public awareness.
"We want people to be aware of the threats they pose to our natural
environment, both plant communities and wildlife," Ellingwood said.
Officials believe the state's wild boar population originates from Corbin
Park, a private, fenced-in shooting preserve that covers large parts of
Croydon and several surrounding towns. The 24,000 acre preserve was founded
in 1890 and is known for its extremely limited membership.
Scott Gilroy of the Blue Mountain Forest Association, which runs the park,
said it would be impossible to estimate how many wild boar are in the park
or have escaped from it over the years. He said he's heard of half a dozen
or so being killed by hunters outside the park each winter.
"Obviously several of them have gotten out because we've found places where
the fences have been cut (by poachers). I think this would qualify very much
as a nuisance rather than a plague," he said.
"We have worked very hard to develop good relations with Fish and Game, and
I believe we have maintained that," he said.
Ellingwood agreed that park officials have been cooperative in attempting to
control the boar population.
New Hampshire hunting regulations do not classify feral swine as wild game.
Instead, the animals are considered escaped private property and may only be
hunted with permission of the property owner. But because the boar
population is linked to the game park, the park has given permission for
licensed hunters to kill the animals outside the park.
"It's evident to us that the preserve is interested in containing those
animals, but it is a difficult challenge given the nature of the animal and
the length of the fences that are involved," he said. "To the extent that
they are authorizing the take of those animals outside the fence, I think
they're demonstrating good faith in their sensitivity to the problems the
animals can cause."
For Field, those problems included a car that was so damaged that it
required repairs off and on for nearly a year after the accident. Her
driver's side door was damaged, and nearly everything under the front of her
car was ripped out.
"That section that I was driving through is particularly dark ... and all of
a sudden I just heard this humongous crash and the car lurched to the right,
and I sort of ended up in the breakdown lane," she said. "I had absolutely
no idea what I had hit or had hit me. In fact, my first thought was that
maybe it was a log or something that had been in the road."
Field said a Fish and Game officer she met after the crash told her the
animal that struck her car was an adult female weighing 150 to 200 pounds.
"The minute I got home I started looking up all my textbooks," said Field,
who used to teach at Colby-Sawyer College. "I'm rather surprised we've got
an established population in the state."
Feral swine populations in the northeast are relative sparse, but there also
are confirmed populations in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
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