Small town, feds fight over fate of feral pigs

Adrienne Packer

Wednesday, April 24, 2002 | 11:12 a.m.

An intruder has invaded the tiny desert community of Bunkerville.

Exactly who is intruding, however, depends on who is asked: Townspeople say it's the government; bureaucrats blame the pigs.

Wildlife biologists caused an uproar earlier this year when they attended a Bunkerville Town Board meeting and outlined plans to conduct a government-funded study of feral pigs along the Virgin River.

Government officials claim a herd of feral pigs nestled in the dense brush along the river carries diseases, tramples riparian habitat and harms federally protected fish, birds and desert tortoises.

"They are an invasive species, and they're causing significant damage to the environment," said wildlife biologist Darren Williams, who will oversee the study and perhaps develop a plan to "manage" the pig population.

Bunkerville's response to Williams' assessment? Hogwash.

Bunkerville residents who have hunted the feral pigs for years say their lean meat is "good eatin' " and claim government officials are overstepping their bounds by looking into a management plan.

"Our sense is leave them alone; they're not hurting anyone and they're providing a little bit of food," Bunkerville resident Kelly Jensen said of the feral pigs.

"I don't know if they're cross-breeding with the turtles or what, but I'm sure the government will use the endangered species card. That gives them more power and authority than you can shake three sticks at."

The tale of how the the non-native animals settled along a 40-mile stretch of the Virgin River varies, but most agree they were let loose from a former pig-hunting ranch near Mesquite.

And with a gestation period of three months, three weeks and three days, pigs breed like rabbits.

"It wouldn't take too many hunters to miss a couple of pigs, then suddenly we have a substantial population," said Dan Swanson, an advisory board member with the Nevada Wildlife Commission.

Determining how many pigs are in the Mesquite-Bunkerville area won't be an easy task. Williams' greatest challenge might be to get property owners' permission to walk their land. In the worst case, he'll have to navigate the river.

Compounding the problem is government officials' suspicions that residents regularly release domestic pigs along the river, making it more difficult to estimate the number.

"This whole thing could be undermined out of spite," Williams said, emphasizing that he has seen no proof of domestic pigs being released.

Swanson, who is stationed in Overton, said he doesn't believe the feral pigs are a problem. And he could have predicted the town's response to the study, which is funded by the state Division of Wildlife and Clark County.

"They would rather the county not be involved in anything they do, pigs, land use, whatever," Swanson said. "It's the general consensus of anything that arises in Bunkerville."

Williams' job is to protect endangered species and their habitat, another concept not well accepted in Bunkerville.

Three types of birds, two species of fish and the desert tortoise -- all considered endangered -- live along the Virgin River and are affected by the roaming pigs.

Not only do the boars -- which weigh up to 500 pounds -- trample vegetation, they root in the river, stirring up a suffocating silt.

"Pigs are very ferocious; they'll eat just about anything and they're destructive to the native habitat," Williams said. "We want to keep the ecosystem intact as much as possible while at the same time maintain some public relations with the community."

Williams said the wild pigs also carry diseases that can't be killed when the meat is cooked. He fears those diseases could be passed on to domestic herds.

Community members say the pigs don't cause property damage and are rarely seen. In fact, hunters typically need a pack of hounds to force them out of the brush and into the open.

They say Williams' study is a waste of taxpayers' money.

"I've never had anybody say they've been walking on the river and they're attacked or 'Get rid of the dang pigs because they're running through our yards,' " said Mark West, a Bunkerville Town Board member.

"The reaction is 'stay out of here.' Here's a non-game animal that we can go out and hunt without Big Brother looking over our shoulder every step of the way. And don't even get me started on tortoises."

The government can regulate the pigs because they are considered "estray" -- loose livestock that nobody claims to be their own. They technically belong to the Nevada Department of Agriculture, Williams said.

Williams believes his study will last a year and will be presented to Clark County's multiple species habitat conservation staff. The division will then decide whether a management plan needs to be put into place to curb the pig population.

Williams is in the early stages of the process but he has already learned a valuable lesson: using the words "government" and "endangered species" in a Bunkerville Town Board meeting will cause the community to squeal.

"The government is sticking its nose somewhere it doesn't need to be," said Cliven Bundy, a Bunkerville farmer. "They're probably making a lot of wages studying something that doesn't need to be studied."

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