With the exception of the occasional aggressive coyote, the animals that roam the hills and gullies of the Bay Area — turkeys, mountain lions, deer, bobcats, foxes and the rest of a veritable Noah’s Ark — find themselves on somewhat laissez-faire terms with the humans around them.
Not so for the rampaging feral pigs. They are tearing up lawns, ripping through golf course fairways, threatening the drinking water and disturbing the harvests at Napa vineyards. Many Californians want them dead.
“They are a pest to just about everybody and everything,” said Eric Sklar, member of the California Fish and Game Commission who helped write a bill introduced last week in the state legislature that would make it easier for hunters to kill feral pigs. “They’re very, very destructive.”