Somewhat critically. Deer are pretty harmful to these same ecosystems, down to insane over population.
I don’t think hogs are eating enough deer to impact populations though.
Hunting and culling are pretty bad methods to do that. It’s useful as a spot treatment, more for moving groups of hogs off problem areas than impacting overall population.
Bait stations to poison or sterilize them. As well as trapping. Either for sterilization and release, or for slaughter is far more effective. And costs less than culling programs to boot.
Sterilization via bait stations has had very good results with White Tailed Deer in pilot programs in the North East/New England. Better than poisoning or trapping. But eradication isn’t the goal there.
Not really. They scatter the minute the gun goes off. Some use that to argue for silencers.
But apparently bows and cross bows are way more effective, because they don’t startle the entire group.
Best case scenario with that sort of culling is “hey we killed 10!”. A poison bait station can take out the entire sounder. Which can be hundred of animals.
