Trump seeks to quell outcry over remarks
Lyndol Swartz says he has tried damn near everything.
He’s put up electric fences and set traps. He’s even tried blasting music in the middle of the night and flashing red lights at sporadic intervals just to scare them off. It’s a temporary solution and it hasn’t solved the feral pig problem on his almond orchard in the Sutter Buttes.
“They are horrible. I just had to kill one a few days ago,” Swartz said.
And it’s not just him experiencing the problem, said Lisa Herbert, Sutter County agricultural commissioner.
“There are lots of farmers with pig problems in the Buttes. I saw damage firsthand this spring when I was surveying for almond freeze damage at Lyndol Swartz’ ranch,” Herbert said. “…As far as the eyes could see they root through the soil, digging up sprinklers, etc.”
The Sutter Buttes is home to a large population of wild pigs. No one knows how they got there, besides the fact that someone had to have put them there.
Dick Seever of Rural Pig Management Inc., was contracted by California State Parks to trap the wild pigs. In the last five or six years, Seevers said, he has trapped “thousands” of wild pigs in the Sutter Buttes.
“There is no reason that pigs should still be in the Buttes because they cannot multiply quicker than I kill them,” Seever said. “Usually, after a year or two of doing what I do they don’t come back. This place is just like clockwork. I was averaging a pig an hour for the first couple years.”
Seever said the reason is simple, he believes there are residents releasing wild pigs into the Buttes. When he first started, all he was catching was small wild pigs, “meaner than hell,” with no hair. A few years later they were much bigger, spotted, with different colored stripes.
He’s also noticed that some of the male pigs’ tails have been cut off and they’ve been castrated. The reason for that, he said, is so hunters can easily identify males to hunt and females to be left to breed.
“Someone is relocating pigs up there, that’s the truth,” Seever said. “The State Park has bent over backwards to help everyone back there, but it’s been nothing but a nightmare for State Parks trying to control it.”
The problem isn’t new for Swartz. He’s President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting on Monday in Helsinki, Finland.
Yuba City park-goers and cyclists have a lot to look forward to.
Thanks to a number of grants and city budgeting, the Parks and Recreation Department has several large projects in the works, including a 5-acre park that will connect to the Sutter Bike Path.
The name of that park is yet to be determined, and the project is still in the design phase, Community Services Director Brad Mcintire said. The city budgeted $800,000 for the project and in the last few weeks received word of a matching grant for $800,000, he said.
The forthcoming park will be built on Harter Parkway and will include a path to connect to the Sutter Bike Path, which follows the old Sacramento Northern Railroad line from Hooper Road in Yuba City to Acacia Avenue in Sutter. Young cyclists will also get a pump track – a looping off-road-type system with berms and turns cyclists can ride continuously without pedaling.