Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
A month ago, at our nonprofit conservation property in South Texas, Thornscrub Sanctuary, I began hammering in long sections of rebar around some of the old growth peyote specimens that occur on the land. Like many places in Texas we have had a bad problem with feral pigs, and I had noticed over the last year or two that they had recently been uprooting a few of the rare cactus species such as peyote as well as Mammillaria sphaerica and Ancistrocactus scheeri.
The pigs would eat the roots and then leave the tops for dead. Since pigs are proficient at rooting around in soil, a friend suggested we start hammering rebar into the ground to protect them, which is what some of the native shrubs like blackbrush do. Some welder friends in San Antonio donated the rebar to us and I got to work. It turns out it actually works, and it saved one of these old clumps - that are probably centuries old - from being uprooted and destroyed.
A month ago, at our nonprofit conservation property in South Texas, Thornscrub Sanctuary, I began hammering in long sections of rebar around some of the old growth peyote specimens that occur on the land. Like many places in Texas we have had a bad problem with feral pigs, and I had noticed over the last year or two that they had recently been uprooting a few of the rare cactus species such as peyote as well as Mammillaria sphaerica and Ancistrocactus scheeri.
The pigs would eat the roots and then leave the tops for dead. Since pigs are proficient at rooting around in soil, a friend suggested we start hammering rebar into the ground to protect them, which is what some of the native shrubs like blackbrush do. Some welder friends in San Antonio donated the rebar to us and I got to work. It turns out it actually works, and it saved one of these old clumps - that are probably centuries old - from being uprooted and destroyed.
