A California school has been left in disarray after a wild hog invasion caused over $150,000 worth of damage.
Geyserville New Tech Academy in northern Sonoma County was targeted by the animals who tore up the turf across the campus. The boars dug holes more than six inches deep, leading officials to erect barricades around the destruction.
Images reveal the extent of the devastation , with large areas of grass completely torn apart. So far, the culprits have managed to evade capture, but Geyserville Unified School District Superintendent Deborah Bertolucci told SFGate that they had identified six hogs.
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According to Bertolucci, two adult and four young boars were responsible for the damage on campus. She said: "At first, I thought my maintenance crew was doing repairs on our sprinklers. Then I realized, 'Oh no, it's the pigs.' It's crazy".
Jason Lish, a supervisor of facilities maintenance at the school, told the Press Democrat that they have hired a trapper to deal with the animals. He said: "The only good thing about all this is they found a sewer cap I'd been looking for."
The animals have repeatedly caused problems for the middle and high school, having destroyed their soccer, baseball and softball fields last year. Bertolucci stated that the damage 'caused a lot of chaos with our sports programs', and a $50,000 chain-link fence was erected to keep the animals out.
Despite the fence, the animals resorted to ripping up grass at other parts of the campus, focusing on the main entrance. Bertolucci added: "The pigs just decided to attack other parts of our campus", dredging up a school garden where students had been planting roses.
The garden was supposed to help restore the native habitat and help attract pollinators but only lured in the wild pigs instead. Wild hogs have now been seen in at least 35 states and are destroying farmers' crops, tearing up gardens and, in some cases, even attacking humans.
Wild pig attacks are relatively rare - but they still outnumber all species of shark attacks combined, research showed. Between 2014 and 2023, there was an average of 5.8 fatal shark attacks worldwide compared to 19.7 wild pig attacks, AgWeb reported.
In 2024 alone, there have already been seven deaths worldwide due to wild pig incidents, with the number of fatalities steadily increasing from 2000 to 2019, totaling 172 deaths.
Dr. John Mayer, a research scientist and manager at the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina, told AgWeb: "Tigers, Indian elephants, Nile crocodiles, and venomous snakes kill more people than wild pigs, but wild pigs are certainly worse than bears, wolves, and all shark species put together.
"Wild pigs are nowhere near the worst of the worst, but they're far more dangerous than people believe," he added, describing the vicious 'stab-and-slash' wounds inflicted by boars. The likelihood of dangerous encounters between pigs and humans is set to rise as the land animals used to roam freely is developed. Pigs now inhabit all 67 Florida counties and cause the most damage in inland areas in the middle of the state.
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