A Vancouver Island golf course could find itself breaking out the piggy bank as it grapples with an invasion of porcine proportions.
“I heard a little ‘rustle-rustle’ behind me, and my gosh there was one big mama pig and her four little piglets,” Pat Miller, who was spotting for a tournament at the Cowichan Golf Club on Sunday told Global News.
“My first reaction of course was, they’re so cute! And following that, we hear about the destruction that’s happening on the fairways.”
As silly as the situation sounds, the invading porkers have become a legitimate headache for the club.
Head pro Norm Jackson said the loose pigs, which he believes have been accessing the golf course through a gully from a neighbouring property, first began showing up in April.
“They are not afraid at all. Balls are going over top of them,” Jackson said.
He estimated there were between seven and 14 of the animals, including adults, juveniles and piglets.
Since their uninvited arrival, the pigs have chewed up the fairways and the rough in search of food, doing several thousand dollars worth of damage — so far.
“Our big worry is they get into the greens. If they get into the greens it becomes astronomical to have to rebuild something like that,” Jackson said.
“We’re worried about the damage they’re going to do to the golf course. And obviously the safety of our members, and the pigs.”
Miller said the club had received several people reach out about helping trap the pigs, and said officials were looking into how to do it.
Ryan Brook, an associate professor in the college of agriculture and bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan said he was “shocked” the pigs had not been trapped already.
“Invasive wild pigs are a huge global problem,” he said.
“Indeed, they are considered by myself and many others to be the worst invasive large mammal on the planet. So if you said what could be worse, I would say nothing.”
According to Brook, there are an estimated 7 million wild pigs in the U.S., and in Canada they have now entrenched themselves in territory covering more than a million square kilometres.
A pregnant sow, he said, needs less than four months to deliver a litter of piglets, who themselves reach sexual maturity in just a few more months — allowing them to reproduce and spread quickly, with devastating consequences.
“They do billions of dollars in crop damage every year, they destroy natural environments, they eat almost anything from mice and frogs and birds … they’ll take down adult white tailed deer, destroy water quality, spread diseases to humans, pets, livestock,” he said.
Managing the animals comes down to either killing them or trapping them, he said. The pigs occupying the golf course, as escaped livestock, should be easy to capture with a simple trap and bait, he added.
“We have definitely missed the window for eradication (in Saskatchewan), so I think we’re a cautionary tale for the island that folks should really take serious what we failed to do and get on it immediately,” he said.
“Like, before Monday those pigs should be gone, if not faster.”
In a statement, B.C.’s Ministry of Agriculture said containing the pigs is the responsibility of their owner.
However, it said once a pig leaves its owner’s property and is not captured it becomes “wildlife” and within the jurisdiction of government officials to capture or kill.
Feral pigs can be captured by a pound keeper, peace officer, their owner or the owner of the land where they’re at large, it said.
The ministry said it remains concerned about the risk of feral pigs, but that no breeding populations have been confirmed to date.
Back at the club, golfers like Miller just want to see their beloved course escape unscathed.
“We love the course and we love the people that run it, and we don’t want the course, especially the greens, to be tampered with,” she said.
“It’s a real concern, so I hope something is happening very soon.”