John Oliver addressed the destructive nature of feral hogs on his HBO show, detailing how they have become an almost impossible problem to solve.
On Last Week Tonight, the host said that the creatures are “actually a massive problem” at the moment, with some as big as 400lb.
He called them “one of the most destructive species in the country”, which was “genuinely shocking” for something that “looks adorable”.
They are “spreading at an alarming rate” and not just in rural America. Oliver said there were now more than six million of them in the US and they cause about $3bn of damage to agriculture each year.
Hogs have “devastating effects on food production and the environment” and have also killed slightly more people than sharks in the last 20 years.
Oliver did explain that many animals kill more people than sharks though, including cows “and yet the cowards at Discovery Channel refuse to do Cow Week”.
Oliver explained that pigs aren’t native to the US yet have been brought to the Americas by people such as Christopher Columbus and various game hunters.
Hogs have very few natural predators and they are incredibly resourceful, having complex social relationships.
A major problem is “they cannot stop fucking” leading to rising numbers even in urban settings. Oliver said it must be “pretty alarming to see them in your neighbourhood” and they can be “very dangerous” on the road, causing damage to cars and even fighter jets.
They also eat farmers crops, destroy seedlings, break up irrigation lines and cause major holes in fields.
They will eat almost anything from corn to soya beans to peanuts to various creatures including sea turtles. “No wonder some of those who study them describe hogs in apocalyptic terms,” he said.
Oliver said they have been “annihilating” most living things they come into contact with, with 300 native plants and animals declining as a result, over 250 of which are threatened or endangered.
They can also spread disease at a fast rate, with 30 pathogens and 40 parasites making them “incredibly difficult to contain”.
He said that there had been “varying degrees of success” in the attempts to control them with loosened laws within sport hunting. He said authorities have been doing “everything they can to encourage hunters to kill as many hogs as possible”.
But it has been hard to outsmart them and the industry surrounding hunting has often made the problem worse as they have been transported to new states just so they could be hunted there.
Oliver said hunting “isn’t going to be the sole answer here” with trapping also being used as well as poison yet a way to do this “humanely hasn’t been discovered yet” as it means inviting a “toxic ingredient into a whole ecosystem”.
There has also been contraceptive bait which would “neutralise the ability to reproduce” yet it’s female hogs that drive fertility.
“As it stands, no single method is going to be able to control our feral hog population by itself,” he said. “Instead, it’s going to take a bunch of tools and the key thing is to use them wisely.”
States like Iowa, New York and Idaho addressed the problem early on so have no hogs yet Texas now has a huge problem.
Oliver said they were “probably always gonna be with us in some capacity”.
