Feral pigs weighing as much as 400 pounds are wreaking havoc near the Anderson Reservoir in California’s Santa Clara County.
The animals are traipsing across a reservoir that was drained of water at the end of 2020 for earthquake repairs to an aging dam, digging up lawns and tearing through irrigation lines, the Mercury News said. The manmade lake had served as a seven-mile barrier between suburban neighborhoods and the remote Diablo Range.
“In my yard I had three packs of them,” Alie Hussein Saad told the newspaper. “There were about 15. You don’t mess around with them. One was massive. It was about 400 pounds.”
Saad and other residents reported seeing feral pigs walking across the dry lake bed and asked the Santa Clara Valley Water District, which owns the reservoir, to pay about $20,000 to replace turf, broken lawn furniture and other damaged property. At least four property owners in Jackson Oaks and Holiday Lake Estates had reimbursement requests rebuffed.
“There are mountain lions walking around Palo Alto,” water district board member Linda LeZotte said. “This is what happens in a drought. Animals migrate. Animals move.”
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Some park agencies and water districts in the Bay Area already trap and shoot hundreds of the wild pigs each because they are non-native species that do considerable damage to wetlands and endangered species such as the Alameda whipsnake and the California red-legged frog.
“They can dig up 50 acres overnight,” said Doug Bell, wildlife program manager for East Bay Regional Parks, which trapped and killed 434 wild pigs last year. “Whole hillsides can be wrecked. People can lose thousands of dollars of landscaping in a single night. There also are concerns for public safety if you have a huge boar running around with kids and dogs.”
The state of California allows landowners to kill wild pigs causing damage on their property after getting a permit from the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Hunters killed 3,950 wild pigs last year in California, about two-thirds of them in Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Kern, San Benito, Mendocino and Santa Clara counties.
In response to damage from the beasts, State Senator Bill Dodd last month introduced a bill to allow property owners to kill wild pigs without a permit. The water district has promised to investigate and will even consider hiring hunters.
Help can’t come soon enough for local resident Roga “Tony” Gabucan. He told the Mercury News that late one October night, he heard commotion. Gabucan opened the door to find a dozen big boars on his lawn.
“They looked at me like I was no threat to them,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. I grabbed a knife and threw it. Then ran away. But twice as many came back the next night. They finished the job.”
Local homeowners face a long wait: The reservoir will remain drained until 2030.
[MN] — Victoria Pruitt