{"id":582832,"date":"2026-04-14T02:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T02:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/582832\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T02:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T02:57:10","slug":"feral-hogs-in-texas-neighborhoods-are-becoming-more-common","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/582832\/","title":{"rendered":"Feral hogs in Texas neighborhoods are becoming more common"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Mesquite, packs of feral hogs<\/a>\u2014sometimes as many as 10 at a time\u2014have been digging up lawns and destroying gardens for weeks, leaving behind churned soil and stripped plants. The activity has picked up over the last six weeks, prompting residents to push city leaders for help.<\/p>\n

Ted Faulkner, a longtime resident of the Falcons Lair neighborhood, said he’s reported the hogs to animal control and the city manager’s office.<\/p>\n

“The assistant city manager is saying they have contacted Texas Parks and Wildlife<\/a> to see if they can get some assistance, because Mesquite doesn’t have the capability to trap these hogs,” Faulkner told CBS News<\/a>. “How much does it take before someone comes up with a way to control them?”<\/p>\n

The problem is showing up in other parts of the state.<\/p>\n

In Fort Bend County<\/a>, a Ring camera recently<\/a> captured a sow and her piglets tearing through a yard and eating plants. In San Antonio<\/a>, sightings have increased near the Frost Bank Center and along\u00a0Salado Creek, where hogs are foraging in residential areas.<\/p>\n

“I’ve lived here for 30 years and never seen hogs before, until they started building hundreds of homes five or six miles downstream from here,” resident Jamie Calberg told KENS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Texas has the largest wild pig population in the country, with more than 3 million animals, according to the Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute<\/a>. They cause an estimated $670 million in agricultural damage each year, along with another $200 million in control and mitigation costs. State biologists estimate that at least $118 million of that damage affects crops and rangeland annually.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason the problem keeps growing is how quickly feral pigs reproduce. Females can breed as early as six months old, with a gestation period of about 115 days. Their diet is equally flexible. As omnivores, they consume both plant and animal matter and can adapt to a wide range of environments, including suburban areas.<\/p>\n

The animals trace back to the 1500s, when Spanish explorers brought domestic pigs to North America<\/a>. Over time, escaped domestic pigs established wild populations that now span much of Texas.<\/p>\n

Managing them becomes more difficult inside city limits. While feral pigs are classified as exotic livestock and can be hunted on private property without a license, firearm restrictions often apply in populated areas. Trapping is allowed, but anyone who traps and cares for the animals assumes responsibility for them under state law.<\/p>\n

Transport is also regulated. The Texas Animal Health Commission<\/a> prohibits moving live feral pigs except to approved facilities such as slaughterhouses, holding sites or authorized hunting preserves. They must be kept in escape-proof enclosures and cannot remain in transit for more than seven days.<\/p>\n

Those rules are in place for a reason. A study published in the Journal of Environmental Management<\/a> found that states with stricter controls on hunting and transport tend to have fewer wild pigs, while more permissive approaches are linked to larger populations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Mesquite, packs of feral hogs\u2014sometimes as many as 10 at a time\u2014have been digging up lawns and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[138621,243121,138622,79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-582832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-chronnews","9":"tag-chronscience","10":"tag-chronstaff","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}