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Health & Environmental Risk

Property and crop damage is the impact most often counted. It is not the only one. This page collects the published record on a second axis: the diseases feral hogs are documented to carry, and what their presence does to surface water. Like the rest of this tracker, it is a reference document — not a live sighting feed, not a service map, and not a risk forecast for any specific address. Every figure below is stated as published, with its source linked.

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Disease in Texas Feral Hogs

Texas Parks & Wildlife Department states that wild pigs are capable of carrying and transmitting at least 30 bacterial, fungal, and viral diseases. Prevalence figures below come from agency positions and peer-reviewed serosurveys; antibody prevalence indicates past exposure, which is not the same measure as active infection.

  • Brucellosis & Pseudorabies

    Per the Texas Animal Health Commission's current position, about 10% of Texas feral swine carry brucellosis and approximately 20% may carry pseudorabies.

    Supporting data point: a 2009 Texas study (Wyckoff et al., Journal of Wildlife Diseases) reported 11% brucellosis and 30% pseudorabies antibody prevalence in its sample.

  • What this means for people and pets

    Brucellosis is transmissible to humans. In people it causes what is commonly called undulant fever — fever, chills, and body aches — and is treatable with antibiotics.

    Pseudorabies is not a human health risk. It does not infect people. It does affect other animals and can be fatal to pets, including dogs, within 24 hours of exposure.

  • Influenza

    Texas feral swine showed 14.4% influenza antibody prevalence — the highest of six U.S. states sampled, compared with 5% in California, 1% in Mississippi, and none detected in Oklahoma, Florida, or Missouri.

  • Q Fever

    6.03% seropositivity in Texas feral swine, with documented geographic overlap between feral swine seropositivity and human Q fever incidence in the state.

  • Official Framing

    TPWD states wild pigs are capable of carrying and transmitting at least 30 bacterial, fungal, and viral diseases.

Water Quality

Spring Creek Watershed — Harris, Montgomery, Waller & Grimes Counties

Per TCEQ's own watershed planning documents, Spring Creek has not met state water quality standards for primary contact recreation use due to bacteria levels. Feral hogs are named as a primary pollution source alongside pet waste and livestock. The watershed spans Harris, Montgomery, Waller, and Grimes counties.

This is the same watershed featured on our Organizations page via Bayou Land Conservancy, the land trust whose focus area covers north Harris and Montgomery Counties.

Source: TCEQ — San Jacinto River West Fork Watershed Protection Plan

  • Case Study — Plum Creek Watershed, Caldwell & Hays Counties

    After Texas Wildlife Services removed 537 feral hogs from the Plum Creek Watershed over a two-year period, bacteria levels in Plum Creek dropped 48% compared with an adjacent area where hogs remained.

    HARC — the Houston Advanced Research Center — is also featured on our Organizations page.

  • Underlying Mechanism

    Feral hogs lack sweat glands and use water sources to cool off, depositing fecal waste directly in and near water.

  • Supporting National Methodology Note

    A South Carolina national-park study found the swine fecal marker was the most frequently detected of all species markers tested in recreational waters, and swine-marker concentrations above a threshold correlated with E. coli levels exceeding the EPA's recreational-water action value.

National Context

  • Trichinella & Toxoplasma

    National seroprevalence of 12.4% for Trichinella spp. and 40.8% for Toxoplasma gondii in 2014–2020 samples — both significantly higher than an earlier 2006–2010 baseline. The South region specifically showed 13.4% for Trichinella.

  • Pseudorabies Cross-Check

    Oklahoma feral swine showed 24.1% PRV exposure, independently corroborating the Texas pseudorabies range above.

  • Leptospirosis — A Calibrated Example

    National exposure is real: 13% overall seropositivity across 2,055 animals (Pedersen et al. 2014). But a 2016 follow-up found only 3.4% of kidneys tested were DNA-positive for active shedding, even in counties with high prior exposure rates (53%).

    Read plainly: exposure is common, but active transmission risk reads lower than raw antibody numbers alone would suggest.

Economic Impact

Read these figures carefully

The dollar figures below measure different things — different geographies, different categories of loss — and are not interchangeable. No single bare dollar figure should be presented as “the” cost of feral hogs.

  • Texas Agricultural Damage

    $871 million in a single year — the highest of 13 states surveyed. American Farm Bureau Federation analysis of USDA National Feral Swine Damage Management Program / National Wildlife Research Center data.

  • Combined 13-State Agricultural Losses

    $1.6 billion across the 13 states in the same survey.

  • National, Broader Scope

    Counting agriculture, health, environment, and property together, a minimum of $3.4 billion annually. This is now the figure USDA itself publicly cites — NRCS Chief Colton Buckley used it directly in the July 2026 announcement of the current Feral Swine Eradication and Control Pilot Program funding round.

Compiled by Texas Hog Dispatch from the sources listed above.

Data License

The dataset behind this tracker — county-level population estimates, activity levels, trajectories, and the CSV / PDF exports derived from them — is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license. You are free to use, share, adapt, and republish the data for any purpose, including commercially, with attribution to Texas Hog Dispatch.

This license applies specifically to the underlying dataset. It does not cover the Texas Hog Dispatch name, logo, seal, site design, written copy, or any other brand assets — those remain the property of Texas Hog Dispatch and are not licensed for reuse under CC BY 4.0. Figures quoted above from third-party agencies and journals remain subject to their publishers' own terms.

Contact for Data Inquiries

Press and researcher questions about the figures shown on this page can be directed to data@texashogdispatch.com.

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