Damage from pigs is nothing new, and wherever wild pigs are present, they inevitably become a problem. Although pigs were an important food source for early Americans, they also were widely considered a nuisance.
Free-range livestock practices were commonplace in colonial America, and roaming pigs routinely damaged crops and food stores of both colonists and Native Americans. Thus they were a source of much tension among colonists and even more so between colonists and Native Americans.
Today, free-range livestock practices are no longer used in the eastern United States, and all free-ranging pigs are considered wild pigs. Just like the free-ranging domestic pigs of early America, today’s wild pigs are a problem for many landowners and agricultural producers. In addition to damaging crops and livestock, wild pigs damage forests and are a threat to native wildlife and the environment.
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A conservative estimate of the cost of wild pig damage to agriculture and the environment in the United States currently stands at $1.5 billion annually.