Laserfiche WebLink
management. The state also appropriates money in a grant program to county <br />governments. So we have a lot of counties, right, you know, it’s not like where you’ve <br />got big area – just one county – but it’s a grant program where county governments <br />only can apply and the money is to help with pig management efforts and so the county <br />can do a lot of things – they can pay private operators to kill pigs, they can fund a <br />trap/loan program – to loan traps out to private farmers and give them advice on how <br />to use them – it’s, it’s a number of different things they can do, ah, one other <br />mechanism we have here that seems to be pretty successful is we have what we call the <br />Texas Wildlife Damage Management Association – it’s a private landowner association – <br />they levy dues on themselves, so many cents an acre or so many dollars and acre – and <br />it goes into a pool of money that pays for damage management, a lot of it being pigs <br />nowadays across those member counties or across those member lands and so, it’s a, <br />it’s a mix of federal money, state money – down to the counties – and I’ll say a lot of <br />counties for us now – have developed out of their own funds – trap/loan programs – <br />and, and even in cases – this is kind of a neat thing I’ve seen – where the counties will <br />get with public school systems and fund like an Ag shop class or an Ag mechanics class <br />to build some pig traps and it’s simple welding and then use those traps to loan out to <br />producers in the county to manage pigs and then when the traps breakdown – need <br />repair – the school builds more – it’s fairly cost effective but it’s also gives the high <br />school kids experience of physical product that they’ve built something that they can <br />also go do for, for themselves to earn a profit later if they do that, so, it’s a mix of things <br />– to be honest with you and there’s never enough money, but I would say we see a lot <br />of creativity. We’ve also seen some NGOs do a pretty good job trying to pool resources <br />to manage pigs, ah, but that one’s always tough, it’s, you know, everybody’s budgets are <br />limited and it can be hard to have them prioritize pigs. <br /> <br />TWC: Thank you. Yeah, one more question. Taysen, District -2. Ah, in Hawaii we don’t have a <br />law set to where we can legally hunt at nighttime, but with your expertise and I believe <br />as well – would it be possible – do you think it would be not possible – do you think it <br />would be a recommendation for our DLNR to actually help maybe permit nighttime <br />hunting? Then that will take care of this feral pig problem we have, either be private or <br />at least private to start off with maybe into the state – do you think that would be a <br />good thing to implement a program like that? <br /> <br />JT: I think it’s definitely worth looking into. You know, for, for many years, um, a lot of, a lot <br />of Texas – well it was always illegal to hunt at night, right, for poaching reasons and <br />what not – as the pig problem grew there was a time that the state was asked by some <br />citizens to allow night hunting just for pigs, right, you can’t night hunt native species but <br />you can night hunt pigs. For the, for the reasons we’re talking about. And the state very <br />carefully considered it – they piloted that in just a few areas – and then now, of course, <br />it's legal to hunt at night for pigs anywhere all the time. And, and I do think it’s worth <br />looking into because in warm environments the pigs are very difficult to get into traps <br />when food is abundant and I feel like in Hawaii you’ve always got food abundant, and <br />in, in areas it is difficult to anything other than night shoot – we run into that – but I will <br />19 <br /> <br />