Humans hogging lowlands

Regarding the article ``Snaring of Hawaii's Feral Pigs Angers Animal Activists,'' Jan. 5:

The author notes that pigs arrived in Hawaii 1,500 years ago with the Polynesians. Other varieties arrived with Europeans 500 years ago. At the rate pigs reproduce one has to question why any vegetation still exists on an island inhabited by the pigs after 1,500 years! Since humans have not been totally controlling their number, what natural process has kept them in check? (Other animals species have such natural control systems.) The pigs' natural population-control mechanism, in all probability, will eventually work in the mountains where the feral pigs now live, as it has for centuries in the lowlands.

It is noted that cruel wire snares are being used in remote mountain areas where dogs and hunters cannot readily function. Pigs are in such inaccessible places because humans, in their exploitation of the more accessible and livable lowland areas, have driven the pigs into the mountains. I bet human exploitation has been far more responsible than pigs for destroying native vegetation in Hawaii. G.B. Lloyd, Southwest Harbor, Maine

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