ATLANTA — Things were looking grim for Georgia’s wild pigs during this year’s legislative session, but they found partial salvation in lawmakers who larded their own budget with too much pork.
Gov. Brian Kemp, in his effort to balance the budget, cut hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending when he signed it earlier this month.
He highlighted some of the major cuts at that time but did not mention the pig eradication projects nestled deep within the 171-page document.
A $1 million public-private pilot program to manage feral hogs was a victim of his line-item veto, as was a $200,000 wild pig eradication program.
The latter sounded like a bounty program to Nick Atwood, an Atlanta volunteer with a loose-knit group called Rooting for Pigs.
Studies have shown bounty programs are ineffective at wildlife control, whether for prairie dogs, raccoons or feral hogs, Atwood said. His group sent Kemp a letter in mid-April explaining all this and suggesting that cutting the programs could save taxpayers some money.
Atwood does not know whether the message led to Kemp’s line-item vetoes, but he thinks it might have.
Asked about this, Kemp’s office did not want to engage in the specifics, referring instead to Kemp’s comments on May 12 when reporters gathered in his office to watch him sign the budget.
The governor said then that he had to fix a “structural deficit” that had left a roughly $1 billion hole in the budget. He said he could have left it alone but that he did not want to leave “a mess” for whoever succeeds him as governor next year, or for the next Legislature.
“So what we’re doing now is making some tough choices,” he said.
The eradication programs had been something of a priority for lawmakers, especially in the House.
Owing to limited time (and attention spans), Rep. Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, could only detail a small number of items in the $38.5 billion fiscal year 2027 budget when he presented it on the House floor on March 10.
Hatchett, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, talked about money for big issues, such as education, health care, prisons and poverty.
But he left time to talk about wild pigs, and the money in the budget to get rid of them.
“Feral hogs are wreaking havoc statewide,” he said, “causing millions of dollars of damage to crops and farms each year.”
The next week, the Senate sent House Bill 946 to Kemp, a measure that authorizes the use of drones to locate feral pigs while hunting them and allows their capture without a hunting or trapping license if they are killed on site.
The measure passed the Senate unanimously, after Sen. Lee Anderson, R-Grovetown, implored his fellow lawmakers to help farmers.
“I just ask each and every one of you vote green so we can go kill some hogs this afternoon,” he told them.
Kemp signed it earlier this month.
So wild hogs still have some worries.
Atwood said they do not deserve the treatment, describing them with words one might use for the teenagers next door (or in your home).
“Pigs are intelligent, curious, adaptable animals that are often misunderstood,” he said.
