Joffrey Brooks, a management biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, has nearly refined the art of transporting fierce wild boars back and forth over the remote mountain ranges of Graham County. Brooks has released dozens of wild hogs captured by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park into the Santeetlah area of the Nantahala National Forest over the years.

His top advice is to stand in the bed of the pick-up truck when lifting the door of the cage when you get where you’re going.

“I won’t say we’ve never gotten a few scratches and scrapes, but we’ve never had any injuries really,” said Brooks.

Aside from one year, that is, when a photographer trying to get pictures at eye level with a boar coming out of its cage ended up with a boar on top of him. Luckily, it was a small one.

“Even the little piglets, if they are irritated and mad they will try to bite you,” Brooks said. But some have weighed as much as 300 pounds and can make an awful racket when penned.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park launched a program 20 years ago to eradicate or at least reduce its wild boar population. Boars are not a native species here and can wreak havoc on the ecosystem.

“They can get into a wetland area and destroy it in one night,” said Bill Stiver, a wildlife biologist with the park. Vegetation is decimated when a pack congregates for too long in one place, their sharp hooves plowing up the ground as they dig about for grubs and roots.

Of course, the hogs unwanted by the park are causing the same damage when released in the national forest.

“Because the hogs can do a lot of damage, they will do damage wherever they are,” said Mae Lee Hafer, a wildlife biologist with the National Forest Service here.

Hafer said wild hogs have destroyed federally protected endangered plants and the forest service had to build enclosures around some areas to keep the hogs out.

The boars are also detrimental to other animals. According to a wildlife commission study, 64 percent of the wild boars’ diet is acorns — a primary food source for bear, deer and turkey.

“From a wildlife management standpoint, there is competition for food. I don’t care what anybody says, they are eating food that would be available for other animals if they weren’t there,” Brooks said.

Same problem, different place

Sometimes the captured and released hogs end up back in the park again. The hogs are released in the vicinity of Hooper Bald, considered the birthplace of wild boar in the region (see related article). It is less than 15 miles as the crow flies from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Brooks said wild hogs are similar to bears in their desire to get back to the home territory, especially the older males. The park has a “one strike” policy, however. Hogs are tagged by the park before being handed over, and if a hog with an ear tag shows up in the park and is caught again, it’s shot.

Tennessee used to release hogs captured in the park into the national forest until last year.

“The forest service just didn’t want them over there anymore. They are detrimental to the habitat,” said Dan Gibbs, a wildlife biologist with the Tennessee Wildlife Commission in Morristown, Tenn. “We have a population that can sustain itself and we didn’t see the need to introduce any more.”

The Nantahala National Forest seems to have a viable reproducing population as well. Last year, the N.C. Wildlife Commission lifted restrictions on the killing of young wild hogs. For most game animals, it is illegal to hunt and kill the young so it won’t hamper reproduction of the species, but that is apparently not a concern for the wild hog population. Hunters shoot between 100 and 200 hogs a year in North Carolina.

The N.C. Wildlife Commission and forest service aren’t particularly married to the idea of releasing these unwanted hogs into the national forest.

“We don’t necessarily want them. The reason they are being released is for the hunters,” Hafer said.

Hafer was quick to distance herself from the current policy.

“This occurred long before I was ever in this position,” said Hafer. “We just haven’t revisited the agreement.”

The Nantahala and Pisgah national forests are scheduled to go through a 20-year forest management plan review starting next year. Hafer said the policy of releasing the park’s unwanted wild boars will definitely be revisited then, “if it hasn’t been already,” she said.

Gordon Warburton, the supervisor for western region of the Wildlife Commission, said the release of the hogs is left over from a historical agreement. When the park began its hog eradication program, local hunters didn’t like the idea of those great game animals going to waste.

Brooks called the release of some of the park’s unwanted hogs a “compromise solution.”

Keeping the numbers up

Efforts to eliminate wild hogs in the park are being thwarted by overly ambitious hunters, however. Stiver believes that hunters who fear the species’ eradication are turning batches of domestic hogs loose in the park.

“We have seen curly tails and real short tails, pale white hogs with black spots, hogs that don’t run from you,” Stiver said. Not your typical razorback.

“We have a problem with people dumping hogs in the national forest, too,” Hafer said.

There are unintended consequences, however.

“The wild boar genes are going to get more and more watered down,” Brooks said. “The old world boar you saw back in the 1970s and 1980s, it had a straight tail and shaggy hair.”

But the bigger threat is the introduction of disease.

This summer, two hogs captured in the park tested positive for pseudorabies. The virus does not pose a threat to humans, but is an extremely contagious disease for swine that causes death and reproductive problems.

“If people are moving these animals illegally, they could also be moving these diseases,” Stiver said. “I don’t know at this point how that is going to affect our agreement with the state on how the hogs will be managed.”

It appears that it could jeopardize the wild hog release program.

“We stay on top of disease very adamantly. That is something we take very seriously,” said Warburton, the supervisor for N.C. Wildlife Commission western region in Marion.

The discovery of chronic wasting disease has halted deer relocation programs in North Carolina. It also raised red flags over the introduction of additional elk into park.

Lathern Hull, who runs a wild boar preserve in East Tennessee, said he’s not surprised that people are setting out hogs.

“There’s pockets of people around the Cherokee National Forest that are trying to preserve the boars,” Hull said. “I actually don’t think you could totally eradicate them because everybody wants to kill hog.”

Hull said boars are the favorite game animal for many hunters, above deer and bear.

Boars will sometimes fight back and spar with a pack of hunting dogs. Unlike bears, which climb a tree, or deer, where hunters sit in a stand and wait for them to walk by, wild boars can seem more exciting.

“Their temperament that they are known for, that’s what legends are made of,” Hull said.

Brooks said people have deep-seated feelings about wild boars and feral hogs.

“You either love them or hate them,” Brooks said.