What Lies Beneath: Feral Hogs and the Hidden Problem of Soil Erosion

You’ve seen the rooting. The wallowing. The torn-up trails and damaged fields. But what feral hogs leave behind isn’t just a surface-level mess, it’s a problem that runs deeper.

While many landowners are well aware of soil erosion and its long-term consequences, wild pigs are an often-overlooked contributor to the problem. Their impact on soil health goes deeper than surface damage, and can accelerate erosion in ways that catch even experienced land managers off guard.

How Do Feral Hogs Disrupt the Soil?

Feral hogs are notorious for their rooting behavior, digging up soil in search of food. This doesn’t just disturb the land; it loosens sediment, exposes bare ground, and accelerates nutrient loss. In fact, rooted areas have shown accelerated rates of nutrient leaching, meaning water washed away some of the needed nutrients in the soil (Gray et al., 2020).

Rooting also damages plant cover, which plays a vital role in stabilizing soil. Less cover means more erosion. Studies have found a decrease in plant diversity, especially among native species and an increase in invasive species in hog-disturbed plots, raising concerns about long-term ecological impacts (Bolds et al., 2021; Gray et al., 2020).

But the damage may not end there. Research out of Hawaii shows that hog activity, including trampling and wallowing, can compact soil and potentially alter its natural runoff patterns (Long et al., 2017; Dunkell et al., 2011). These disruptions can increase the risk of erosion, flooding, and sedimentation. While the findings are specific to those landscapes, they highlight the potential considerations for similar environments.

Streambanks, Sediment, and Water Quality

Streamside erosion is another major concern. Feral pigs tend to travel and root along streambanks, weakening vegetation and destabilizing the banks themselves (Bolds et al., 2021). This reduces the natural buffer that keeps soil out of waterways, leading to more sediment and reduced water quality downstream.

Add in other forces, like rainfall, wind, or livestock traffic and you get a compounded erosion problem that’s tough to reverse.

Nutrients Lost, Crops Affected

Soil disturbance from hogs also affects the chemical and biological processes below the surface. Research shows that rooting in forested areas increases soil aeration, which accelerates decomposition and that leads to greater nutrient leaching (Bradley & Lockaby, 2021).

This same behavior can have major impacts on agricultural fields, too, even though rooting might appear similar to plowing at first glance.

The key difference is intent and control. Plowing is deliberate, consistent, and timed to support the crop cycle. It’s done for specific purposes, preparing the seedbed, managing weeds, and alleviating compaction.

Rooting, by contrast, is random and destructive. Pigs dig wherever they find food, with no concern for soil health, field conditions, or your planting schedule. It’s unpredictable. Sometimes repeated in the same areas, which weakens soil structure and it’s damaging to crops by exposing roots and killing seedlings. It also disrupts planting patterns, leaving behind uneven rows that are difficult to manage.

Worse, rooting often happens during wet conditions when the soil is most vulnerable. That can increase erosion, runoff, and nutrient loss—stripping the topsoil when it’s needed most.

For farmers, this isn’t just an environmental concern—it’s an economic one. Nutrient loss and uneven terrain can reduce yields and make it harder to run equipment across damaged ground. While plowing sets your land up to grow, feral hog rooting does just the opposite—costing you both your productivity and your soil.

The Nuance: When the Land Responds Differently

Not all environments respond to hog disturbance the same way. In some forested areas, bare soil created by rooting can lead to soil erosion; however, in other areas rooted soil may act like a sediment trap, reducing erosion by slowing runoff (Pitta-Osses et al., 2022). Studies in Australia suggest that pig-created pits found on hillslopes work to trap sediment, potentially lowering erosion in certain conditions (Hancock & Lowry, 2021; Hancock & Lowry, 2023).

Still, those findings come with caveats. These benefits may be temporary, highly site-specific, and dependent on soil type, slope, rainfall, and vegetation cover. Long-term consequences are still uncertain, and that’s why further research is essential.

A Bigger Picture: More Than Just Dirt

The impacts of soil disruption go beyond visible damage:

• Invertebrates suffer, disrupting decomposition, pest control, and soil structure.
• Water quality declines, increasing environmental stress.
• Native plants struggle, creating an opportunity for invasive species to move in and weakening overall ecosystem health.

For rural and working lands, this adds up to lost productivity, more complex land management, and higher restoration costs.

What You Can Do

The good news? There are effective ways to limit the damage. Managing feral hog populations is one of the most impactful steps landowners can take to protect their soil from ongoing disruption. And trapping remains one of the most practical and scalable options available.

Tools like the Pig Brig Trap System are designed with that in mind. It's been field-tested across a wide range of environments—from open farmland to remote forest. It doesn’t rely on cell service or electricity and offers 360-degree entry, making it efficient for whole-sounder removal. The system’s simplicity and portability allow landowners to set traps where they’re needed most, even in challenging terrain.

Trapping won’t reverse the damage overnight, but it’s a step toward protecting what’s below the surface from the nutrients that feed your crops to the stability of your soil. It’s about taking control before the problem digs in deeper.

Citations

Bolds, S., Lockaby, B., Ditchkoff, S., Smith, M., VerCauteren, K. (2021). Impacts of a large invasive mammal on water quality in riparian ecosystems. Journal of Environmental Quality, 50, 441-453.

Bradley, E., & Lockaby, G. (2021). Invasive wild pigs: a significant disturbance in coastal forests. Forests, 12(8), 1042.

Dunkell, D. O., Bruland, G. L., Evensen, C. I., & Litton, C. M. (2011). Runoff, Sediment Transport, and Effects of Feral Pig (Sus scrofa) Exclusion in a Forested Hawaiian Watershed1. Pacific Science, 65(2), 175-194.

Gray, S., Roloff, G., Kramer, D., Etter, D., Vercauteren, K., & Montgomery, R. (2020). Effects of wild pig disturbance on forest vegetation and soils. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 84(4), 739-748.

Hancock, G., & Lowry, J. (2021). Quantifying the influence of rainfall, vegetation and animals on soil erosion and hillslope connectivity in the monsoonal tropics of northern Australia. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 46(10), 2110-2123.

Hancock, G., & Lowry, J. (2023). Do feral pigs increase soil erosion? A monsoonal northern Australia case study. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 48(14), 2828-2841.

Long, M. S., Litton, C. M., Giardina, C. P., Deenik, J., Cole, R. J., & Sparks, J. P. (2017). Impact of nonnative feral pig removal on soil structure and nutrient availability in Hawaiian tropical montane wet forests. Biological Invasions, 19(3), 749-763.

Pitta-Osses, N., Centeri, C., Fehér, Á., & Katona, K. (2022). Effect of Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) Rooting on Soil Characteristics in a Deciduous Forest Affected by Sedimentation. Forests, 13(8), 1234.