Callicoon — Residents of River Road and Tower Road in Callicoon knew they had a problem.

One look at their lawns and it was evident that a large animal was doing some very serious damage.

Luckily, a call to the New York State DEC was passed on to USDA’s Justin Gansowski, who immediately took action.

“The wild pigs had been sighted on both side of the [Delaware] river,” Gansowski said. “It was a coordinated effort by the New York and PA wildlife partners along with the National Swine Program.”

Gansowski, who is a Supervisory Wildlife Biologist, and USDA Wildlife Specialist David Savage inspected the damage and realized they were dealing with feral pigs.

“We set up a corral trap at a property on Tower Road,” Savage said. “We had a motion camera which we would watch in shifts to see them go in and out of the trap.”

With bait in the trap to attract the feral swine, Savage said they wanted to make sure they had all five pigs in the trap before they closed the door.

“After we had all five pigs in the trap we hit the button and closed the trap,” Savage said of the two-week surveillance to capture the pigs.

“We had them on camera at a couple of different locations,” he said. “Feral swine are non native, free ranging pigs.”

Savage said the homeowner’s lawn on Tower Road looks like a rototiller went through. “Those poor people, their lawn was decimated,” he said.

Gansowski said that is one of the main reasons the USDA is so vigilent in keeping New York state feral swine free.

“The agricultural damage they can cause is hard to measure,” Gansowski said. “And just for the landowners, it will cost them a lot of money just to put their lawn back together.”

Gansowski pointed out that the feral swine burrow to find “anything with a calorie in it.

“From earthworms to grubs, small amphibians to reptiles, they will find it and eat it, he said. “They also will reduce the number of new seedlings in the woods and cause other damage, which is so hard to measure.”

The five feral swine which were captured in Callicoon were euthanized and upon further research it was determined that one of the sows was about to have 14 piglets.

“This was ready to be a very large problem,” Savage said. “This is why we work hard to get them all. If we would have only captured two or three the other ones would have scattered across three counties.

“We haven’t had any more reports,” he said. “We appreciated their [Callicoon residents] cooperation as well.”

“Our goal is to eliminate feral swine from all populations of New York,” he said. “We put a lot of effort to keep it that way.

“Our biggest watch – and what we continue to monitor – is New York’s border with PA,” he said, noting that PA does have a population of the feral swine. “And it’s a long border.”

Should anyone site a wild boar, they should contact Jason Gansowski at the USDA at 315-915-3200.