Michigan DNR declares boars invasive species

Here is a bit of the DNR press release. Note that MS. Humphries has tendered her resignation, but still wants to stir the pot.



Dec. 10, 2010



Department of Natural Resources and Environment Director Rebecca Humphries has signed an order to make feral swine and wild boar an invasive species in Michigan. Humphries gave the order an effective date of July 8, 2011, giving the state Legislature time to enact laws to provide regulations for facilities that currently provide wild boar breeding and hunting. If legislation is not passed to regulate the facilities, the invasive species order will go in to effect, making it illegal to possess wild boar in Michigan.

I started this post to get opinions on this topic, so I suppose I should give my own. Clearly no one wants to see the natural habitat in our state torn up by feral hogs. Likewise no one wants our pork industry jeopardized by disease from feral hogs. Declaring Russian Boars an invasive species and closing our hunting preserves is simply another attack on our private property rights by an anti-high fence agency (Michigan’s DNR). This is being done as a tactic to pressure the hog hunting facilities into unfair, costly regulations that would make the business unsustainable in our state. It is my opinion that the hog hunting facilities should have been regulated with fair common sense requirements some time ago. The fact is that our DNR lacked the foresight to do what was right and would prefer to declare a hog crisis in the press now. They have claimed to the press that we have 4,000 Russian Boars feral in this state, and point the finger only at hunting preserves this is an obvious lie as we only have about 7,000 Russian type boars behind the fence in the state total ! On the other hand hobby farmers have hundreds of thousands of hogs with no fencing requirements, or disease testing going on. As near as I can tell no state has pure bred Russian boars as a feral hog problem they are all hybrid type pigs. To ignore hobby farm pigs and outlaw Russian boars is simply prejudicial, and will not address a feral hog problem. Common sense regulation of both types will. I am not even convinced that Michigan has now or ever will have a problem with feral hogs. Michigan has a different climate, different terrain and a totally different population to acre of land ratio than any state where feral hags are a problem. The one thing our DNR did somewhat right is to allow hunters to shoot any hog they see, if there was going to be a hog problem in this state that would take care of it. To me our DNR’s way of creating a false crises to slam our industry is not acceptable. They play games to advance their agenda which is to be rid of any high fence in Michigan. If we are for private property rights then lets be for them all the time. How can we help hunting preserves ?? We can stand together strongly whenever wherever our rights are unfairly threatened.