Increasing populations of feral hogs and the damage they are causing landowners prompted Florala’s City Council to authorize the discharge of firearms in the city limits to hunt them.

Mayor Terry Holley said he has trapped six on his property, and game cameras have shown more than 60 on one adjacent landowner’s property; and 54 on another adjoin piece of property.

“A lot of our farmers and just landowners are having problems on land inside of the Florala city limits,” he said. “My pond looks like somebody took a tiller to it.

“They are coming closer to town,” he said.

While state game laws put no closed season and no bag limits on feral pigs, Holley said the council needed to notify the Alabama Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries that they would allow guns to be discharged in an effort to lessen the population and mitigate the damage the hogs are causing.

Feral hog sightings in Alabama were once primarily confined to the river swamps of southwest Alabama, according to the Alabama Department of Conservation’s web site. However, feral hog populations have increased during the past 15-20 years and now occur in all 67 counties.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that feral hogs cause more than $800 million of agricultural damage in the United States annually.