EDUCATION & AWARENESS CAMPAIGN // USDA-APHIS FERAL SWINE
VIDEO - PHOTO - STORY
Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Missouri. 2019-ongoing
The USDA has commissioned Modoc to document the underreported feral swine crisis spreading around the U.S. as part of a nationwide public outreach campaign to educate landowners, farmers, and hunters about the threat posed by feral swine and efforts to manage their proliferation.
Deliverables include short documentary films from locations across the U.S., still images, and earned media articles appearing in relevant publications. Since 2019 we have reported and produced films in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Missouri, and Georgia.
Chapter 1. Mississippi
Cormorant Garamond is a classic font with a modern twist. It's easy to read on screens of every shape and size, and perfect for long blocks of text.
"If feral hogs got African Swine Fever or foot-and-mouth disease. It could shut our trade down. A disease outbreak via hogs would impact big economic factors like GDP and jobs.”
Dr. Stephanie Shwiff
Research Economist/Project Leader
USDA National Wildlife Research Center
Chapter 2. Oklahoma
"Hunting boogers 'em up. They leave your place and scatter across the country side and make night runs to you. We were harvesting this fall and I was going home at dusk. I saw this big ole boar. I drove nice and gentle. He didn’t spook. I parked and I dropped him. Looked like he had Russian boar – real hairy, big tusk, heavy front end. Probably bred with something that escaped from a game farm. I’ll shoot a single boar, but I’m not shooting a sounder, that trains them to run."
Martin Mount, pecan grower, Oklahoma
"This isn’t a game to these farmers and ranchers. It’s their livelihood. They don't need somebody to come out with a dog to catch one or two hogs and leave. They need to put a trap up and they need these feral hogs gone."
Kenny Kellet, USDA Wildlife Services ranger, Oklahoma
Kenny Kellet
Chapter 3. Texas
The Original Fast Food
Pigs arrived to the Americas in the 1500s from their native Europe with Hernán Cortés and Hernando de Soto. The animals’ ability to find food and survive almost anywhere made them an ideal food source for the stop-and-go expeditions. The New World explorers could leave hogs on Caribbean islands, on islands in the Mississippi River, and in bottomland forests as they traversed the interior of the U.S. When the explorers needed food, they simply went into the woods and shot a hog. The fast-food protein resource never thinned since female hogs can begin reproducing at 6 months of age, yielding up to 14 hogs per litter, and breeding twice a year. No other large mammal breeds as prolifically as the wild hog. And few animals are as adaptive, tough, and smart as the hog. As they say in Texas, “If a female hog gives birth to 10 babies, 12 will survive.”
Chapter 4. Arizona
Success Story
In Arizona's Havasu National Wildlife Refuge the Colorado River creates an oasis in a desert too harsh to support feral swine. So the invasive animals were essentially trapped within a relatively manageable geographic area. USDA-APHIS Wildlife Services team and their partners, using drones, boats, traps, and s0me tracking dogs, have eradicated feral swine from the refuge. It's a success story that provides precedent for other isolated populations of feral swine.
Chapter 5. Georgia
Sea Turtles and Peanuts
In Georgia we filmed on remote Cumberland Island, managed by the National Park Service, and on the mainland in the heart of peanut farm country. Feral swine on Cumberland Island were digging up and eating the eggs of threatened sea turtles nesting along the beach. While not completely eradicating the swine from the island, NPS rangers and USDA-APHIS Wildlife Services have culled the feral swine population and implemented protective measures with the sea turtle eggs, with positive results for the sea turtles.
The peanut and corn farmers, on the other hand, continue to deal with loss of crops and farmland degradation due to feral swine. Farmers and landowners are collaborating with USDA Wildlife Services to trap and remove swine from high-impacted areas, but a critical component of the management effort is public awareness about transporting hogs for hunting purposes.
Chapter 6. Louisiana
Alligators and DNA Mapping
In Louisiana's western lowlands, feral swine are impacting alligator farmers and cattle ranchers. We visited the FR Ranch Preserve, managed by the Moore-Odom Wildlife Foundation as a cattle ranch and wildlife reserve. Feral swine are preying on alligator eggs and impacting cattle pastures.
This chapter also includes the USDA-APHIS efforts to use DNA tracking to map out feral swine on the landscape to better know populations and potential geographic movement.
