World Notes UGANDA

Wildlife herds may be dwindling across most of Africa, but in central Uganda their ranks have unexpectedly grown in recent years with the addition of an unfamiliar breed: feral pigs.

When a five-year civil war in the early 1980s drove farmers to abandon their land and livestock, swarms of once docile domestic pigs and their offspring returned to the wild, rooting up the earth in peasants' gardens and devouring cassava, sweet potato and groundnut crops. With their powerful sense of smell, vicious temperament and high birthrate -- sows can bear litters of up to 15 young four times a year -- the beasts are a formidable new enemy for local peasants. Moving mostly in darkness and traveling up to 20 miles a night, the wild pigs have cut local food production by half. But hunters risk their lives if they go near enough to shoot the pigs and must rely instead on haphazard metal traps and sisal nets.