Feral pigs are rampaging in California community again — and residents feel helpless

An incursion of feral pigs left California homeowner Ted Hunting’s lawn in shocking condition — so much so that his wife screamed when she first discovered the damage.

“I came out and I just couldn’t believe what I saw,” Hunting told KGO. “You can actually see the holes in the ground, with their tusks, where they dug up the grass.”

Wild boars are back in the Bay Area community of San Ramon, residents say, and authorities say there’s not much they can do about it.

“We could send out our officers but, really, I don’t know what they’d do,” Capt. Denton Carlson of the San Ramon Police Department told The San Francisco Chronicle.

County animal control officers say they don’t have any jurisdiction unless the pigs attack pets or people, according to the publication. State wildlife officers can issue permits allowing residents to hire trappers to remove the pigs.

“We help to some extent, but people have to adjust,” Ken Paglia with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife told The San Francisco Chronicle.

It’s a perennial problem in California.

“Their food resources will start to dry up,” Paglia told KGO. “So, they start to search for food and water, and inevitably they end up in people’s yards and gardens.”

In 2019, packs of feral pigs rampaged through Lafayette, Danville, Dublin and other Bay Area communities, McClatchy News reported. Some residents said they planned to just give up and replace their lawns with other landscaping.

In 2020, San Jose considered allowing licensed trappers to hunt wild boars with bows, but eventually tabled the idea and continued trapping them, San Jose Inside reported.

Wild pigs have been part of California since the 1700s, when Spanish and Russian settlers introduced domesticated pigs, some of which escaped and went feral, the agency says.

In the 1920s, a Monterey landowner introduced European wild boars to the state, producing hybrids of feral pigs and wild boars. Feral hogs are now found in 56 of the state’s 58 counties, the Department of Fish and Wildlife says.

The omnivorous pigs feed on everything from grass and roots to grubs, snails and larvae, feeding mostly at night in dangerous or unfamiliar territory, according to the agency.