Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program

After water sampling turned up high levels of E. coli bacteria in streams south of Austin, the Plum Creek Watershed Partnership was created to restore water quality.

Soon after, they developed a Web site to track feral hogs, which are one of the main sources of the E. coli.

Depending on environmental conditions, times of the year, and where you are, what we have preliminarily in some of the feedback is that they might be to upper third or half of the bacteria problem in some areas.

Matt Berg is the Plum Creek Watershed coordinator. He says drought makes the situation even worse.

Especially in these dry times, those hogs are going to be hanging right next to the stream and having a lot easier time of depositing their fecal matter right into that stream and increasing the bacteria count.

The newly developed Web site allows landowners or the general public to report the date and type of damage from the feral hogs. It even has an interactive map where residents can identify the location of the hogs. This way, officials know where to direct hog management efforts.

Berg says the Web site is one of many tools that will be necessary to successfully manage feral hogs.

This is just one piece of that puzzle and I think as we go through time, as more of those pieces will fall into place, we might be able to make a dent in those populations.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Gretchen Mahan. The Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series. For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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