Thousands of Vietnamese pigs are roaming Puerto Rico in what appears to be an unstoppable march to eat and breed on an island that spends work to contain them.
Pigs look for food in gardens and farms, tearing down trash cans and leaving a stinking trail of urine and feces, with the occasional ladder to bathe in pits full of rainwater. Old pets or their offspring breed at such a rate that the Island last year declared a health emergency so federal authorities could begin eradicating them.
It is the most recent non-native species to invade communities in Puerto Rico, as was previously the case with iguanas and alligators, although pigs have been especially difficult to control and cannot be slaughtered for food because they carry numerous diseases.
Teams from Georgia, Alabama and Florida helped remove 500 pigs in four days in August, but the animals are so numerous and so scattered that authorities had to come together to draw up a new plan they launched ago. several weeks, said Gustavo Olivieri, assistant supervisor for the Caribbean district in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Olivieri, alluding to hundreds of pigs concentrated in a poor area of San Juan, the capital, said authorities realized there were many more animals than anticipated.
The problem started about five years ago when people started buying pigs as pets without knowing they were growing to 115 kilograms (250 pounds) or more. Olivieri says the pigs multiplied when the powerful Hurricane Maria hit the island in September 2017 because some pigs escaped their confinement and others were released by their owners.
Although there are no official figures, Olivieri estimates that there are now thousands of Vietnamese pigs roaming Puerto Rico, with 67 of the 78 municipalities reporting having seen them.