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eliminate them fully but help keep them at the same time. So I don’t know if that’s a <br />question or a comment that could be elaborated on? <br /> <br />JT: It’s a – it’s tough one too. So, our, our state is very quickly urbanizing and developing <br />with lots of folks moving in and a lot of new housing developments going up in rural <br />areas, and far away from the city, but one of the problems that we have with pigs is that <br />they are extremely intelligent and once they realize that people won’t hurt them they’re <br />not afraid of people anymore. And we’ve had some situations where people have been <br />chased, attacked and we had a couple of folks that have been killed in recent years by <br />pigs, and so that’s one where we deal with native animals like coyotes – coyotes, you <br />know, they get too close to people if you make a bunch of noise throw a rock in their <br />general direction they go oh, OK, and they run off – they go people are dangerous – with <br />pigs you just make ‘em mad and so it’s been a real problem for us to try to keep pig <br />numbers down as those areas develop – talk to people about how you reduce pigs being <br />there, you know, just don’t make food available for them. If there’s water that they’re <br />gonna be in, you know, a \[unclear\] don’t know how much you can do about that – but <br />it’s a difficult thing to balance the development that’s happening with the fact that <br />people are creating public safety concerns for themselves by the fact that the pigs are <br />there and they’re going to be there. I would say we don’t have a solution to that – it is a, <br />a problem in progress for us as well and I’m, I’m always concerned about how many <br />more pig attacks we’re gonna have. <br /> <br />RD Ah, John, District – 1, Duerr. Now how about the funding mechanisms? You know, how <br />do you, how do you piece together fed funds or maybe grants – state funds, local funds <br />– how does this work to try to get a, get a hold on a pig problem? <br /> <br />JT: Yeah, so a great question. I’ll lay a few things out for you from my perspective and I’m <br />gonna work from, from fed down to local, um, and, of course feds, you know, the <br />federal funds are pretty big, um, they, most of it’s going through USDA Wildlife Services <br />and that program is growing, ah, I can tell – I chair the federal advisory committee for <br />the Wildlife Services program and so we, we always recommend to the secretary of Ag <br />that they make more funds available for managing pigs but also in the last Farm Bill <br />there was a what was called the Feral Swine Eradication and Control Pilot Program and <br />that was Congress trying to see if it would be cost effective to fund the mechanism to <br />reduce pig numbers – eradicate in some places or just reduce them in others depending <br />on what local people wanted. That was a pilot in the last Farm Bill. Whenever we get a <br />new Farm Bill the intimation has been that it’s going to be a permanent program with a <br />larger pot of money that states can say I want to be a part of that. And, and what’s <br />interesting about that is in a time when politics is extremely divided and partisaned – <br />that is a bill or a section of the Farm Bill that has been co-sponsored by both democrats <br />and republicans as this is a non-partisan issue, so that’s been good to see. That’s a big <br />slog of the funding. At a state level, our state does a couple of different things – for one <br />thing is the state directly appropriates money to help manage pigs – and so they will <br />partner with USDA on that or they’ll partner with other agencies to, to help pay for pig <br />18 <br /> <br />