Traveler Special Report: Invasive Mammals and the National Parks
Senior Fellow Rebecca Epanchin-Niell discusses feral hogs in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for an article in National Parks Traveler.
Hogs are also seen as valuable creatures by hunters and other stakeholders, says Dr. Becky Epanchin-Niell, a senior fellow at Resources For the Future, a nonprofit think tank, who conducts research into various invasive species issues.
“The fact that some people strongly value their presence on the landscape can hinder control programs," Epanchin-Niell says, "because people can maintain populations on their land that can serve as sources to other locations on the landscape, making it harder to prevent damages elsewhere. Even more challenging is when some people might even purposefully introduce the species to new locations to establish new populations for hunting.”
