Feral pigs flummox Puerto Rico, infiltrate communities

By DÁNICA COTO
December 24, 2020

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Thousands of Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs are snorting and squealing their way across Puerto Rico in what many fear has become an unstoppable quest to eat and reproduce on an island struggling to stop them.

They forage through gardens and farms, knock over trash cans and leave pungent trails of urine and excrement, stopping occasionally to bathe if they find potholes full of rainwater. The former pets — or descendants of former pets — have reproduced at such an alarming rate that the U.S. territory declared a health emergency last year so federal officials could start eradicating them.

It’s the latest non-native species to invade communities in Puerto Rico like iguanas and caimans did before them, although these are proving particularly hard to control and can’t be killed for food because they carry so many diseases.

Crews from Georgia, Alabama and Florida helped remove 500 pigs in four days last August, but the swine are so numerous and scattered that officials had to reconvene and come up with a new plan they launched several weeks ago, said Gustavo Olivieri, Caribbean district assistant supervisor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

“It was out of control,” he said of the hundreds of pigs concentrated in just one impoverished area in Puerto Rico’s capital. “We realized there were way more animals than we anticipated.”

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