Most of the wild creatures around us usually seem fairly harmless. Thousands of us watch the birds, squirrel and deer that populate our area with a sense of wonder. The living world around us truly is amazing and beautiful.

But it can also be a bit scary and costly too.

Rarely do most of us pause to consider how Mother Nature impacts our economy — at least not until you’re a victim.

Across Adams County and Concordia Parish, however, packs of wild hogs are causing significant impact to area farmers, ranchers and homeowners.

The proliferation of wild hogs has become an enormous problem in the country, particularly across the South. Sadly, most experts believe this is a problem that mankind caused, by releasing hogs to hunt for sport. Unfortunately, as is often the case when mankind tinkers around with the world around us, things didn’t go exactly as planned.

The impact on farming alone can run into tens of thousands of dollars each year. Wild hogs rapidly can destroy a farmer’s work — hundreds of acres — in no time.

But the cost isn’t just to the individual farmer; those costs are ultimately passed along to all of us who buy crops or products created through the byproducts of farming.

To correct the mistake caused by releasing the hogs in the first place, our society will have to ramp up eradication efforts. Those programs will almost certainly cost money that’s not budgeted in any state or local budgets right now.

We hope that when such proposals are created, we can all remember the cost of not doing anything is likely higher than the cost of working to correct the problem.