Ann Reiley Jones is flanked by Glen Gentry and Dearl Sanders at the Bob R. Jones-Idlewild Research Station. The three have long led the charge in trying to solve Louisiana’s feral hog problem. Photo by Tobie Blanchard

In the fight against feral hogs, Ann Reiley Jones calls herself a fundraiser and cheerleader. She is also the spark that ignited research on controlling what has become a $91 million problem for Louisiana farmers.

About 10 years ago, Jones noticed an uptick in the pig population on her East Feliciana property, which is adjacent to the LSU AgCenter Bob R. Jones-Idlewild Research Station, named in honor of her late father. Station director at the time Dearl Sanders noticed the same.

“They are so nasty, so ugly and so mean, and they carry all kinds of diseases,” Jones said. “Dearl and I decided, let's try to do something about the pigs because they were horrible then, and of course, they are 100 times worse now.”

Roaming packs of feral hogs damage crops and forestlands, eat turkey and alligator eggs, compete with other wildlife for food and pollute waterways.

Not one to let a problem fester, Jones wrote grants to the Irene W. and C.B. Pennington Foundation, which had previously endowed the $1 million Pennington Chair for Wildlife Research in the AgCenter. She received $150,000 in funding for three years for the initial research in the feral swine research project.

“Back then, the only legal methods for controlling them were trapping them or shooting them,” Sanders said.

The Pennington Foundation grants allowed the station to purchase and evaluate traps that could be lent out to landowners to trap pigs on their land.

“The traps were so popular they kept a waiting list,” Jones said. She added half-jokingly, “I could never get high enough on the waiting list to try them.”

The Bob R. Jones Wildlife Research Institute also served as a vehicle through which funds were raised to further research. Jones said the wildlife conservationists who serve on the institute’s board have been critical in advancing the mission of wildlife research.

Jones also is a wildlife conservationist and a hunter. But hunting hogs was never her thing.

It was hunters, though, who helped move wild pigs from isolated areas of the state to other regions. This contributed to the infestation, and experts do call it an infestation, of hogs throughout the state.

Even with hunters killing about 200,000 to 250,000 of them and landowners trapping them, it was not enough to significantly reduce the population of these prolific reproducers.

“Anything you do to take a pig off the landscape is good,” Sanders said.

Landowners saw some relief from the traps, but Sanders recognized that trapping would never be the optimum method for controlling them.

When the grants ran out, the station began leasing the traps to landowners, and three of the five traps purchased are still in rotation.

John Barton Jr. is a member of the board of the Bob R. Jones Wildlife Research Institute and owns land in East Feliciana Parish. He has made an effort to trap hogs on his land but agreed that trapping can only maintain the population so other solutions were necessary.

“Being on the board has given me insights into the problems feral hogs have caused,” Barton said. “I am encouraged by the recent developments by LSU AgCenter.”

The new development Barton is referring to is the recent patent on a bait to control feral hogs. The patent inventors included Glenn Gentry, who is the current director of the Bob R. Jones-Idlewild Research Station; John Pojman, LSU chemistry professor; and Baylen Thompson, a former graduate student who worked with Pojman.

All along, researchers have been working toward perfecting a poisoned bait.

“The trapping project was the kicking off point to do more and better stuff,” Sanders said.

Glen Gentry, an animal scientist, said the traps were a great extension outreach project to let the public know work was being done on this problem.

Gentry has been working toward bait that is effective at killing the pigs but is safe for non-targeted animals.

Jones said it’s been fortunate to have scientists like Sanders and Gentry trying to solve this problem.

“They’ve been great to work with because they come up with something, and it would be very, you know, wild and woolly and you go, ‘oh boy, this is going to be great.’ And then, boom, that doesn't work,” she said.

What worked was bringing in one more expert, Pojman. Gentry had a sodium nitrite bait that ticked the right boxes — it provided a lethal dose to the pigs but wasn’t harmful to deer or other wildlife. But Gentry was trying to put the bait in a capsule so it wouldn’t break down.

Pojman’s lab came up with a coating for the bait that kept it from breaking down or crumbling.

“When John Pojman determined we didn’t have to encapsulate the nitrite, that changed the game and sprung us forward,” Gentry said.

The next hurdle for the researchers is bait dispersal. Gentry said they are evaluating two methods. One is a feeder that uses cellular technology to release the bait balls. The other is burying the bait.

“The pigs don’t always live where there is good cell reception,” Gentry said.

Dr. Jim LaCour, state wildlife veterinarian with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, is conducting research on the buried baits. The pigs could sniff them out, root them up and consume the poison.

The next step with the bait is an Experimental Use Permit from the Environmental Protection Agency before it could be field tested — proving to be another hurdle because of the need to align funding and research cycles. Gentry said while they’ve made significant progress, they are still six or so years away from having a product on the market.

Jones, a steadfast force in this battle, hopes to see a bait come to market.

“I want to solve this problem, I really, really want it solved, and I want LSU to benefit and get the credit for attacking what is a huge problem all across the world,” she said. “It's been a great example of how private initiative and public undertaking can work together to solve a problem.”