A contract that allows federal workers to trap and capture feral pigs at the city’s Hoomaluhia Botanical Garden was allowed to lapse, resulting in increased damage to the grounds.

In the roughly two months since U.S. Department of Agriculture officials removed their pig traps and snares from the 400-acre site, the garden’s employees reported seeing significantly more pigs and more damage when they showed up for work.

The contract for $51,754 expired Sept. 30. A proposal for the new contract, for $53,009, was not submitted by city Parks Director Toni Robinson to the Council until Oct. 31.

The Caldwell administration said citywide fiscal restrictions spurred by an anticipated $150 million operating budget shortfall next year forced parks officials to consider eliminating the contract.

"The botanical gardens feral animal contract was not rubber-stamped for renewal and was under review for possible elimination,"city spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke said. "When we saw the evidence of the damage the feral pigs began causing after the old contract expired, the Caldwell administration decided several weeks ago to begin the process of seeking City Council approval to renew the contract."

More than 200 wild pigs populated the garden when the city first reached an agreement with the USDA’s Animal andPlant Health Inspection Service, Animal Damage Control Section, in fall 2007. From 2007 to 2013, 232 feral pigs were captured under a work plan aimed at "reduction and control of feral animals at the Honolulu Botanical Gardens System," city officials said.

While the contract theoretically encompassed all four Honolulu botanical gardens, nearly all of the work was done at Hoomaluhia. (Wildlife officials also offered advice to workers at Wahiawa Botanical Garden on how they should set up traps to capture feral chickens that have been posing a nuisance there, Parks Director Toni Robinson said.)

Alma Phocas, Hoomaluhia supervisor, said there are now between 50 and 70 wild pigs that come out from the wooded sections of the garden after dark and wreak havoc.

During a tour of the garden Tuesday morning, Phocas pointed to a number of mud wallows and other areas where groups of pigs had dug up turf and torn up plants. Evidence indicated some of the hoof tracks were left only hours earlier, she said.

"They damage the root systems of plants," Phocas said. Efforts to preserve native plant species have been hampered because pigs have an affinity for gnawing on tender, young plants, she said.

"It’s a battle protecting our plants against the destruction they do," Phocas said.

Typically, the pigs run at the sight of people, and there have not been any reports of the animals attacking humans in the 11 years she has been at the garden, Phocas said. But the feces left by the pigs often contains communicable diseases, including brucellosis — an infectious disease that includes flu-like symptoms — and leptospirosis — another infectious disease with symptoms of fever, chills, muscle aches, vomiting and diarrhea.

Phocas also pointed out that since USDAemployees took away the traps at the end of September, the pigs appear to have become less afraid, getting lower into the park and even getting as close as three or four feet from Hoomaluhia’s permitted campsites.

"Because there are no traps, we’ve seen them coming back all around,"Phocas said. "They’re coming closer and getting bolder, coming to campsites, even the parking lots."

The Council Intergovernmental Affairs and Human Services Committee gave preliminary approval to Resolution 13-275, authorizing renewal of the contract, on Nov. 20. The full Council is expected to give a final approval Dec. 11.

Under the terms of the contract, allowable methods of removing the pigs include "corral trapping, non-lethal leg snaring and lethal neck snaring." But Winifred Singeo, Honolulu botanical gardens director, said she has never approved the use of lethal traps, guns or hunting dogs for the program.

Stan Oka, chief of the Parks Department’s Division of Urban Forestry, told Council committee members that those types of activities have been disdained by city officials because the garden allows overnight camping, and because of the grounds’ proximity to homes.

Traps and snares are set up at night away from public sections of the park, he said.

"We’re afraid that because feral pigs reproduce at a fast rate that the population will come back up again, and then we’re going to have a bigger problem," Oka said.

Captured pigs are euthanized elsewhere and buried at the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill on the Waianae Coast, he said. The agreement states that no party is to benefit from the sale of the animals, he said.

Council Intergovernmental Affairs Chairwoman Kymberly Pine said city officials should look into the possibility of using the animals as food.

"When I think of the poverty in my district and how people go hunting in the mountains for food, it kind of saddens me that (the carcasses) are coming back to my district into the landfill," Pine said. "I’d rather it be consumed."

Robinson said she was willing to have further discussions on the issue.

Officials with the USDA’s Wildlife Services office did not return calls for comment on the contract.