For sure, the PGC, DCNR and all the environmnetal orgs are completely against it. I don't have any real firsthand experience with feral hogs, but the experts seem to predict the end of life as we know it, should they get established in PA. They are considered habitat wreckers, that are next to impossible to control. Not trying to get off your topic, BTB...but imagine if deer weren't native to PA and a few were released and started to become established. I wonder if they might say the same things about the deer as they have pretty much painted that kind of a picture the last few years here in PA.
There is a faction of environmental extermists that goes as far as wanting to eliminate every species that wasn't present in a given region for the last thousand years or so. They would love to eliminate even species such as brown trout and ringnecked pheasants form places such as PA for their misguided agenda of turning earth back into a big green sphere, with no evidence of mankind's interference.
Yes, the pigs are very popular in the south. Bag limits are often liberal, but I don't believe that the state agencies are trying to annihilate them. You'd think that if they are so destructive that each state would be exhausting all of their energies to completely eliminate them. Of course, like I said earlier, deer can also be considered a very destructive animal, and given our recent track record in PA with deer mgt, I wouldn't expect that the tree huggers would want anything else in the woods that might compete with the tweety birds or the pretty flowers. Seems like if you ask alot of hunters, especially those fed up with the deer fiasco, that they wouldn't mind having another big game animal to hunt.
When this all hit the news a couple of years ago about the wild hogs, remember they temporarily issued an open season, and since then, they halted the season and haven't heard much about it since. best I can figure is they didn't want extra attention contributing to rising populaity and decided to deal with the small poulation themselves. Locals in bedford haven't seen them in a while.