GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — West Michigan can breathe easy. No, feral hogs are not knocking down your doorstep to chew up your gardens or overtake your farms.
A report released late last year discussed how the feral hog population is spreading across the United States, stirring up headlines in Michigan that the invasive pest will be the state’s next big problem.
The report was released by Captain Experiences, an online platform to book fishing and hunting trips. Using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Captain says there is some form of feral hog activity in 22 Michigan counties.
Feral swine can certainly be a destructive pest. To quote a 2015 ruling from the Michigan Court of Appeals: “They escape, breed vigorously, spread disease, eat crops, defecate in lakes and genuinely cause ecological mayhem.”
But Tony Duffiney, the Michigan state director for the USDA’s APHIS Wildlife Services, is urging people to take a breath before fortifying the fence around their gardens. He says the population size and where they are found is misrepresented in the data .