Wildlife Services Aims To Take Out Last Potholes Pigs

Some hunters say they’d like a shot at the unwanted oinkers wandering around near Potholes Reservoir, but state and federal officials will make a hard push in the coming days and weeks to eradicate the last of the feral swine here.

“We don’t want to get behind the eight-ball like other states,” says USDA Wildlife Services biologist Laurence Schafer in Olympia.

It’s unclear how many pigs were originally roaming the Desert Unit of the Columbia Basin Wildlife Area or where they came from, but at least two breeding sows have been killed so far.

While Schafer says it’s believed there’s now just a lone boar out there, he’s not taking any chances either.

In cooperation with WDFW, his agency is starting an aerial campaign tomorrow that will close public access to 1,300 acres of the unit through the end of August.

They’ll be using bait stations and a helicopter, the most efficient method for hunting down critters over open ground.

“Otherwise, he could run circles around us in the phragmites,” Schafer says.

WDFW says signs will mark the closure area. Generally speaking, it’s in the lower end of Winchester Wasteway. The area will reopen for the Sept. 1 start of hunting seasons.

Schafer doesn’t believe pigs are being illicitly released here, but hair samples will be taken from any that are shot to try and determine their origin.

Last September is when the first reports started coming in to WDFW’s Ephrata office.

Following our first blog on the situation in mid-October, a local upland bird hunter told us that he’d bumped into a black pig that had then charged at him. He shot at it but the hog ran off.

That one may have been the black sow — then with a litter — that turned up on a trail cam exactly a month ago, says Schafer.

They were quickly lethally removed, he says.

At least “three or four” other feral swine were taken out during Wildlife Services’ operations earlier this year, Schafer says, while last fall and winter two off-duty WDFW employees out hunting for the pigs bagged two apiece, including one pregnant sow.

A subject of keen interest amongst some Washingtonians since the Great Bacon Hunt of the early 2000s, earlier today some hunters commented that they wished sportsmen would be allowed to take out the porkers and claim the meat.

Technically, nothing’s been stopping us from doing so.

According to WDFW Game Division manager Mick Cope, feral pigs are not regulated by his agency, and no license is required to hunt them.

“They’re part of our invasive species watch list. They’re open to be removed from the landscape at any time,” Cope told us earlier this year.

Indeed, wildlife managers do not want them roaming around whatsoever — in the words of another WDFW staffer, “they scare the bejeebus out of us.”

A press release from the agency out today says they cause $1.5 billion in environmental damage in the 39 states infested with them.

The Washington Invasive Species Council say the animals “pose serious ecological, economic, and health threats” and “can be extremely destructive to fields, fences, and facilities. Their wallows can affect ponds and wetlands, muddying the water and destroying aquatic vegetation. They can strip a field of crops in one night and pose a threat to ground-nesting birds and some endangered species. Feral swine also can transmit diseases and parasites, such as pseudorabies, brucellosis, and tuberculosis, to livestock and people.”

To report feral hog sightings, you can call the toll-free federal squeal-on-a-pig hotline at (888) 268–9219, fill out an online form here, or get the council’s app for iPhones and Android devices.