Excerpts from a story that originally appeared on WGNO on July 23rd, by Vanessa Bolano.

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NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) - Trapper John Schmidt has caught over 3500 wild boars all over the state. Now he wants to make it his mission to help on the West Bank as hogs continue to digging into the levees there.
 
“If there on the levees this time of year these hogs are hungry. They’re looking for arrow root, grass roots and worms and grubs, and when it rains, which we’ve been having a lot of lately, when it rains the ground gets soft, the clay gets soft, and they dig through it and they’re looking for these things to eat,” says Trapper John Schmidt.
 
Schmidt says they’re weakening the levees at a time when we need them most: the middle of hurricane season.
 
“They should have started last year in January or December when they figured out they had a problem,” says Schmidt.
 
Schmidt is talking about those at the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection authority on the West Bank. Wednesday evening the levee authority agreed to set aside up to $25,000 for hog control, but they have yet to make a decision as to what method they’ll use.
 
They recently ran a 45-day pilot program where Hog Commander Chad Kelly caught close to 35 pigs. Now, they’re looking into employing JPSO Sharpshooters, much like the team used to combat the growing nutria problem years back.
 
“The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office has received approval from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to treat the hogs as a nuisance animal. That’s very important. Right now there’s only two on that list: nutria and coyotes. That would allow JPSO to actually shoot the hogs,” explains John Monzon.
 
It’s not the solution Trapper John thinks will work.
 
“These are not wildlife experts these are police men. I think police men should be doing police business,” explains Schmidt.

The video above is linked from WGNO's website and unfortunately contains advertisements.

For the complete story click here.