Rampaging wild pigs demolish landscaping at California school, officials say

A family of feral pigs has torn up the grounds at a California school looking for food, educators told news outlets.

Some churned-up areas at the Geyserville New Tech Academy campus remained blocked off by yellow tape, The Press Democrat reported on Aug. 12, shortly before school was scheduled to start.

“At first, I thought my maintenance crew was doing repairs on our sprinklers,” Superintendent Deborah Bertolucci told SFGate. “Then I realized, ‘Oh no, it’s the pigs.’ It’s crazy.”

Security cameras at the combined middle and high school identified the culprits as two adult boars and four juvenile boars, according to the publication.

“They went to town,” John Demarest, who often walks his dogs past the campus, told The Press Democrat. “It looks like the work of a small bulldozer.”

Bertolucci told SFGate that she plans to cover some of the estimated $150,000 in repairs with bond money and that local landscaping companies have offered to help.

“It’s a big hit for us. We’re a small school and don’t have a lot of facility money,” Bertolucci told the outlet. “I’m just shocked by the amount of damage that was done.”

Jason Lish, the school’s supervisor of facilities maintenance said trappers have been hired to stop the pigs, The Press Democrat reported.

Pigs were introduced to California in the early 1700s by Russian and Spanish settlers for farming, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said.

In the 1920s, a Monterey County landowner introduced wild boar, which bred with domestic pigs to create a hybrid. The pigs can be hunted with a license.

They feed on grasses, tubers, roots and invertebrates, depending on the time of year, the agency said.

Geyserville is about a 75-mile drive north from San Francisco.

This story was originally published August 25, 2024 at 2:51 PM with the headline "Rampaging wild pigs demolish landscaping at California school, officials say."