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private lands they can become a nightmare, and if you imagine a situation for somebody has no <br />fences and has large acreage and is deliberately dumping food waste out on the ground. I’m in <br />Hawaiian Acres and a common thing is, oh, don’t shoot my pig, don’t trap my pig. Well, then, <br />take your pigs off my property they’re destroying everything, you know, and as soon as you trap <br />them or shoot them then they’re claiming you took my pets and there was a pig that was spray <br />painted PET on this sides – wandering all over Hawaiian Acres and the person looked pissed. I <br />mean, he was ready to throw hands over a trapper trapping this pig that was causing tons of <br />damage – but as soon as the neighbors find out, hey, wait a minute, you’re claiming ownership – <br />I’m gonna sue you for damages – all of a sudden it’s not my pig – it’s wild. So I think enforcing <br />the feeding of feral animals needs to be addressed, you know, in a blanket way and I think the <br />neighbors are videotaping – if you have wild pigs – fine – keep ‘em on your own property but, <br />when people feed and they deliberately attract it does so much more damage and, those are <br />some main areas that we really have to address but when it magnifies the problem with the wild <br />pigs carrying brucellosis and pseudo rabies and now you disrupt their migration – now that <br />they’re being fed they’re having larger litters – they’re sticking around – they’re co-mingling <br />with everybody else and population explodes and I know I’m running over but the last thing is <br />there are well over 6 million pigs in the United States, over 2 million in Texas alone and they <br />have to, slaughter and euthanize, kill – I think it was about 87% of hogs that are there – just to <br />keep the population steady – that’s not even going to make a dent into it. Hawaii, you know, <br />give it another 20 years or so and we’ll be in the same boat. So, we need to come up with a <br />comprehensive plan so we can still hunt the pigs but right now they’re moved down into the <br />subdivisions. People are feeding them and it’s just a real train wreck and we really need a <br />comprehensive approach to deal with it and that will also help to stop spreading disease to our <br />domestic species and to people. <br /> <br />AA: Thanks, Kim. At, this time, any question from the Commission. <br /> <br />RD: Well, that was awesome… <br /> <br />NR: Yeah, that was… <br /> <br />RD: ….Robert Duerr. Thank you very much that was really informative. <br /> <br />KK: Sorry, it was a lot and I get that – I’m very passionate about it cause I’ve seen people get sick – <br />I’ve seen – I’ve had to… <br /> <br />NR: I feel sick right now… <br /> <br />KK: You know, part of my job, you know, with a lot of these diseases – once it’s unleashed so many <br />of the animals are infected that you just have to start from scratch and when you take a disease <br />like brucellosis, usually if a piggery becomes infected it’s 80% or more and it’s more cost <br />effective to euthanize everything. And some of these large places that we’ve gone to – you have <br />to dig a huge hole and \[unclear\] is pretty heavy and I just got to the point by the end of the day I <br />could hardly hold it up and I had tendonitis from putting down that many pigs and when we get <br />to that point, I feel like I failed at my job. We should have stopped it before it got to this point <br />and we seem to be doing or more of that now with TB on Molokai, brucellosis has just, it just <br />seems to have really spread. We’ve diagnosed in horses this year and every pig farm that’s <br />11 <br /> <br /> <br />