Often smaller than barnyard swine, the wild boar makes a living by digging soil to eat worms, roots and other delicacies. This fast reproducer is smart and none-too-choosy about grits. Here's how the National Park Service puts it:

"The pig, a secretive, highly adaptive opportunist, seeks and destroys native plant communities without regard for rare or endangered status. Rooting and rutting, digging and degrading, pigs eliminate endemics, and spread and fertilize aliens."

In Hawaii, pigs helped cause the extinction of 63 bird species once found nowhere else. More than half of Hawaii's endemic ("found nowhere else") bird species are dead, helping make the islands the world's extinction capital.

This honeycreeper is one of the group of birds that alien species are killing in Hawaii. National Park Service

 

Disrupts native vegetation and "plows" soil for plant seeds. Plops a dollop of "natural fertilizer" on weed seeds. Wallows become breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Reward for capture: Bacon, pork chops, bristles, pigskin.

 

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