The Rampaging Pigs of the San Francisco Bay Area

A proposed California law would make it easier to hunt feral swine, the voracious ‘super invaders’ that are the bane of some East Bay suburbs.

MORAGA, Calif. — The residents of the San Francisco Bay Area go to great lengths to accommodate the wealth of wildlife around them.

A sign at a playground in Moraga, a 35-minute drive from San Francisco, advises parents that rattlesnakes are “important members of the natural community” and to give the snakes “respect.”

Across the Bay in the San Francisco suburb of Burlingame, an animal shelter has rescued a family of skunks from a construction hole, a chameleon from power lines and nursed back to health 100 baby squirrels that tumbled out of their nests after their trees got trimmed.