THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 15, 1995 TAG: 9505150046
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
The wild pigs that roam the isolated marshes of Back Bay are a timid and ugly breed of outcasts. Like lepers on a desert island, they keep to themselves and shy from approaching humans or the midday sun.
Their thick skins often are covered with ticks and other parasites. They eat snakes. They have yellowing tusks and dark, wiry hair.
For years, no one paid much attention to them, letting the nomadic pigs scratch for grubs and roots in two protected parks on the remote southern tip of Virginia Beach.
But suddenly they find themselves center stage in an investigation into why the director of the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation pulled a .45-caliber pistol and killed two of the pigs along a dirt road in False Cape State Park.
The state internal auditor has spent the past week interviewing about 40 witnesses to the shooting April 26. That was the day conservation chief H. Kirby Burch, an avid hunter and political appointee of Gov. George F. Allen, stopped a caravan of state officials driving in the park to shoot the pigs.
An auditor's report is expected to be released this week. Burch's boss, Secretary of Natural Resources Becky Norton Dunlop, already has cleared him of most legal tangles he faced from the incident.
Burch killed, apparently, a sow and her youngster, say experts and wildlife officials, who added that wild pigs rarely travel in pairs unless they are mother and child.
A spokesman for Burch confirmed that the first pig killed was a young male, weighing about 50 pounds. Because Burch deemed that pig too small to provide enough meat for a barbecue honoring Virginia National Guardsmen, he decided to kill the heavier sow, too, spokesman Gary Waugh has said.
Little study has been done of the wild pigs at False Cape and the adjoining Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Population estimates are guesses at best, ranging from between 500 and 1,000 pigs.
Most information comes in the form of anecdotes and observations from rangers and managers who sometimes cross paths with this odd species, believed to be descendants of domesticated pigs from old farms that once dotted the Atlantic seashore.
Joe McCauley, acting refuge manager at Back Bay, said that only once during his tenure has a pig charged a person. That was when a ranger walked between a sow and its baby.
``She went after him,'' McCauley said. ``He had to jump up on his truck, and the mother just kind of circled a while before she moved on with her little son.''
Mostly, the pigs are described as a nuisance. In rooting for food, they use their hooves and tusks to tear up marshy scraps of land, sometimes at the base of dirt roads and levees inside the parks.
State officials have said this action speeds erosion and may threaten several types of rare plants at False Cape, including the large bog cranberry and the spoon-leaved sundew. A 1990 inventory of endangered plants warns of a threat from pigs.
Waugh said that pig rooting also has spurred the growth of reed grass at False Cape and that park staff are planning a controlled burn this year to get rid of these domineering reeds.
During a recent tour of Back Bay, McCauley pointed out several patches of pig damage. The torn ground, he said, is similar to what a light tractor does in turning over soil. It also looks like someone has camped there for a long weekend.
Dr. Terry Taylor, a veterinarian with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Richmond, said his chief concern with wild pigs is their potential to spread disease to farm swine.
He said most of the Virginia population is found in Virginia Beach. Wild pigs, which may have been imported illegally to hunting preserves in Southampton County, are the probable source of an outbreak of a disease that killed several domestic pigs on a farm there in 1988.
``To be honest, the Agriculture Department wants to clear out feral hogs,'' Taylor said, using the scientifically correct name for wild pigs. ``We'd kind of like to see more of them hunted or trapped, but because of humane reasons, it can look bad.''
Florida, which has a bigger problem with wild pigs than Virginia, pays people to trap them, Taylor said. If the pigs, which tramp through landfills and dumps in Florida, pass a health test the trappers can sell them for meat, he added.
Population control in Virginia is served mostly through a limited hunt at Back Bay and False Cape each fall. For one week, usually in October, hunters chosen through a lottery are allowed to take pigs and deer.
Pig hunts were initiated in 1986 at False Cape. From 1991 to 1994, hunters using shotguns have killed only 58 wild pigs, Waugh said. ILLUSTRATION: Illustration
Wild Beach Pigs
L. TODD SPENCER
Joe McCauley, acting refuge manager at Back Bay National Wildlife
Refuge, says the rooting of wild pigs speeds erosion and may
threaten several types of rare plants.
by CNB