Wild Pigs

Re "Hunters to Trap and Shoot Pigs on Santa Cruz Island," Sept. 17: The National Park Service's plan proposes to pay professional hunters $4 million to $5 million to shoot the wild pigs after spending $2 million to erect fences to prevent the pigs from re-inhabiting previously cleared areas. Tens of thousands of hunters purchased tags to hunt wild pigs in California during 2001-02. Many of these hunters pay $300 to $600 to hunt wild pigs with guides on private ranches. Why doesn't the National Park Service collaborate with the California Department of Fish and Game and offer public wild pig hunting on Santa Cruz Island?

BOGOTA, Colombia -- A little wild pig named Josefo, abandoned by his mother, helped keep Sgt. Jose Libardo Forero sane. For nearly 13 years, Forero was one of the "forgotten" hostages held by the leftist rebels known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. During that unending stretch of his life, spent chained to other prisoners round the clock or confined in barbed-wire pens, he found mental escape in bonding with jungle animals. The career police sergeant tells of the tiny bit of happiness he found befriending monkeys, parrots and, finally, Josefo, whom he initially kept alive by feeding him milk with a syringe (and who later got hooked on coffee)

Re "Biologists Propose Killing Wild Pigs on Santa Cruz Island," Feb. 28. After reading this article, I had to question the cost. I believe a more economical and probably more efficient solution would be an organized hunt with permits sold to hunters. By the way, I am not a hunter but a taxpayer. At the very least spend part of the $7.5 million on a study of funding this program through organized trips and permit fees, with public input. CHARLES HENDERSON Ojai

DALLAS -- Rarely do the Olympics, javelinas and chewing tobacco wind up in the same story. But then, rarely do the Olympics encounter someone like Brady Ellison. The young man tugs a faded cap down over curls of blond hair and explains that, if it weren't for a steady hand and a sharp eye, he might still be hunting hogs on the ranch. "I'm a country boy at heart," he says. For now, his singular talents have led him in a different direction: Ellison heads into summer as the world's top-ranked archer and a good bet to win gold at the 2012 London Olympics.

They're big, ugly and mean. Nobody is 100% sure where they came from, but the feral pig population in the woodsy region of eastern San Diego County is expanding. Without natural predators, and with a proclivity for reproduction, the wild pigs number several hundred. An average adult can range from 200 to 300 pounds, with nasty-looking tusks and a frightening snort. Biologists say they are a menace to the bird population and they nibble on new-growth trees, not a good thing in those areas struggling to recover from wildfires.

A herd of 30 wild pigs wandered onto the shoulder of a highway near Walt Disney World, causing a traffic snarl as motorists slowed for a good look and to take snapshots. "They're wild pigs and they came out of the woods and the next thing you know, people are slowing down," Lt. Randy Harper of the Florida Highway Patrol said last week. The pigs contributed to an hourlong traffic tie-up.

Pop star Michael Jackson may draw huge crowds around the world, but Indian wild pigs are not among his fans. A farmer in the southern state of Karnataka, troubled over the animals attacking his crops, found that playing Jackson's songs scared them away, Press Trust of India said Monday.

A pair of wild pigs that wandered off course were hit by an F-16 fighter, forcing the pilot to eject as the jet veered off a runway and crashed at Jacksonville International Airport. The pigs were killed. The pilot was bruised. The $16-million jet was destroyed. Lt. Col. Sam Carter, 46, was rolling down the runway at 160 m.p.h. after landing Tuesday night when he saw "a brown blur" and felt a bump before his Air National Guard jet veered toward a ditch and a stand of pines.

The government is hiring hit men to kill the pigs on Santa Rosa Island, but there are plenty of guys who'd do it free. The wild swine, they say, are good to eat and a thrill to stalk. Since a week ago, when the Channel Islands National Park announced plans to kill the island's 4,000 or so wild pigs, sportsmen have been calling with offers to help. Inquiries come hourly from "people looking for action," Park Service dispatcher Fred Rodriguez said. "They'll say, 'I want to get on the list.'

You're walking through a grassy woodland at twilight near Stinson Beach a few miles to the north of here. To the left is the brillance of a Pacific sunset. To the right are fields of dainty wildflowers turning from gold to purple in the fading light. And dead ahead is a big, hairy hog, grunting through the stillness, his long snout rooting up grass and flowers like a plow run amok.

Wednesday night viewers can tune into a reality show about an outspoken, controversial, influential mother who lives in one of the country's noncontiguous states, has a complicated relationship with the media and regularly brandishes firearms. Only this time it's not a former vice presidential nominee, it's Roseanne Barr, who returns to television on Lifetime's "Roseanne's Nuts. " But from the opening scene, in which Barr and her partner, Johnny Argent, hunt the wild pigs that plague the comedian's macadamia farm on the Big Island of Hawaii, the show more than occasionally plays like a satire of "Sarah Palin's Alaska.

They're big, ugly and mean. Nobody is 100% sure where they came from, but the feral pig population in the woodsy region of eastern San Diego County is expanding. Without natural predators, and with a proclivity for reproduction, the wild pigs number several hundred. An average adult can range from 200 to 300 pounds, with nasty-looking tusks and a frightening snort. Biologists say they are a menace to the bird population and they nibble on new-growth trees, not a good thing in those areas struggling to recover from wildfires.

On Monday night's dinner menu at the Union Rescue Mission: tacos made from elk, deer, sheep, wild pig, black bear and antelope. For pescatarians, there were yellow tail, tilapia and tuna tacos. Vegetarians were out of luck. About 250 pounds of fresh game meat was donated for the feast, sponsored by the Sportsman Channel as a part of its national "Hunt. Fish. Feed." initiative. Most diners were unfazed by the rustic fare. Many skid row residents who eat at shelters are used to diets that vary depending on what has been donated that week — from day-old doughnuts to Dodger dogs.

Boars are foraging through carefully tended gardens here and rooting up city parks in search of food. Angry sows have on occasion attacked people who strayed too close to their piglets. Some residents want the animals curtailed, even if it means a cull. "There are too many boars around here because Berlin's hunters don't shoot enough of the animals," said Uwe Neumann, a resident of the Eichkamp Siedlung, a small cluster of homes near Berlin's massive Grunewald park. It's common to stroll the grounds of the Im Dol, a small park in a residential area of southwest Berlin, or the nearby Schlachtensee, and see boars rummaging in the bushes and shrubbery.

Edom, Texas It was a cool Saturday night in East Texas, and many men were surely someplace warm, swilling beer and watching football. That was not Joe Paddock's idea of good times. Covered in camouflage and carrying an AR-10 assault rifle, night-vision goggles and enough ammo to outfit a small battalion, Paddock was wading through weedy bottomlands, eager to "get up on some hogs," as he excitedly put it. Two packs of wild boars on a retired fire marshal's ranch had eluded his scope for weeks.

The huge hog that became known as Monster Pig after being hunted and killed by an 11-year-old boy had another name: Fred. The not-so-wild pig had been raised on a farm in Fruithurst and was sold to the Lost Creek Plantation just four days before it was shot there in a 150-acre fenced area, the animal's former owner said.

The wild swine breeding in the rolling hills of mellow Marin County have gone too far. They're now threatening the most popular groves of ancient redwood trees in California. About 1.3 million people annually trek through Muir Woods National Monument, where redwoods thousands of years old reach high into the sky only 15 minutes from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

Animal rights activists will get another chance to try to persuade a federal judge to halt what they consider the senseless slaughter of thousands of pigs on Santa Cruz Island. Recently rebuffed in their attempt to secure a temporary restraining order against the National Park Service, In Defense of Animals and two individual plaintiffs intend to ask Central District Judge Dickran Tevrizian Jr. on Sept. 26 to reconsider the case and grant an injunction against the feral pig eradication program.

A yearlong pig hunt, including full-moon hunts with knives and dogs, will begin this weekend above several Honolulu neighborhoods plagued by porcine invaders. Areas to be opened for the hunt are along the Honolulu Mauka Trail System in the Koolau Mountains overlooking the growing Honolulu and Waikiki skyline.

A federal judge has ruled that the National Park Service did not violate environmental laws in its slaughter of wild pigs on Santa Cruz Island. U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian Jr. on Monday dismissed a lawsuit trying to stop the killings, the third time he has handed animal rights activists a defeat. Tevrizian has denied requests for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to stop the pig-eradication program.