After the state intervened to trap about 100 swine demonstrating feral behaviors, Montana food banks are slated to receive an influx of pork this week.

Late last month, Wildlife Services, a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s umbrella, tipped off the Montana Department of Livestock that it might have a feral swine population on its hands.

Wildlife Services, which intervenes when landowners report conflicts with wildlife, had been called to Phillips County in north-central Montana to investigate a potential bear conflict. The agency didn’t find evidence of bear activity, but it did find hoof prints, pig scat and other signs consistent with swine presence. The day after Wildlife Services visited the site near Malta along the Hi-Line, the state started looking into the matter and learned that approximately 100 pigs were running uncontained and “beginning to demonstrate behaviors and characteristics consistent with feral swine populations,” according to a press release. 

The Montana Legislature passed a law in 2015 prohibiting the importation, transportation or possession of feral swine. Intentionally, knowingly or negligently allowing swine to live in a “feral state” is also illegal. By passing the law, policymakers sought to ward off issues states and provinces have reported with feral swine, which can damage crops and wetlands, prey on wildlife and spread a form of brucellosis that can be transmitted to humans.

Neighboring areas, most notably Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada, have grappled with feral swine populations for years, and wildlife managers there and in the U.S. consider them to be an invasive species.

Montana State Veterinarian Tahnee Szymanski told Montana Free Press that feral swine can become established in three ways: they can migrate into Montana from an area with an established population, they can be introduced — illegally — by hunters eager to pursue them for sport, or they can develop when domestic animals are freed from the “normal checks and balances” associated with livestock production.

“Domestic swine, left to their own devices for a couple of generations, actually revert back to feral behavior very quickly,” Szymanski said. “This is a really good reminder that a potential feral swine population could crop up anywhere in the state.”

The state livestock department receives about six reports per year of potential feral swine sightings. All of them have turned out to be “owned domestic swine running at large,” according to an agency press release.

In this particular case, there were some unique circumstances related to a death in the family that owned the swine, Szymanski said. 

“This situation just kind of got out of control,” she said. “It has been allowed to maybe fester a little bit longer than a traditional circumstance we would encounter.”

Syzmanski said trapping operations began earlier this month, and all parties involved are pleased the meat will be distributed at food banks around the state.

On Oct. 18, the first swine shipment arrived at Producer Partnership, a nonprofit animal processing facility that works with agricultural producers to turn donated livestock into food for schools and other nonprofits. Trapping operations are ongoing with another 30-45 animals yet to be collected, Szymanski told MTFP on Oct. 22.

Producer Partnership is the country’s only nonprofit meat processing facility inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A product of the COVID-19 pandemic, Producer Partnership is located between Big Timber and Livingston and employs about 10 people.

Producer Partnership president and founder Matt Pierson estimates that the Montana Food Bank Network will receive between 8,000 and 14,000 pounds of pork from the swine. He said he’s unaware of any other organizations set up to take on these kinds of “oddball projects.”

“Our hope through this partnership is that people realize there’s a more amicable, better way to solve these issues without just going in and shooting everything,” he said. “It helps solve a problem for the state, and it helps put all that meat into the food bank.”