Aside from the competition they give other masteaters in the critical fall season, wild boars upset the ecological balance in additional ways. Susan Bratton, research biologist with the National Park Service’s Uplands Field Research Laboratory here in the Smokies, has made detailed studies of boar damage. She found that in some areas boars had greatly reduced the numbers of certain wildflowers, such as spring-beauty, yellow adder’s-tongue, and wake-robin. Many other kinds of herbaceous wildflower species in the park are known to have been eaten, uprooted, or trampled. Wild boars also damage tree roots and seedlings, but apparently avoid beeches, thus favoring the root sprouting of this species. They root up grass sod on balds, which speeds the invasion of balds by other herbaceous plants and trees and they cause soil erosion by removing the plant cover. They also harm native species by preying on those mentioned above and destroying the nests and eggs of ground-nesting birds such as grouse and turkeys. With such a list of black marks against the non-native wild boar, it becomes readily apparent why the National Park Service is concerned about its numbers in the park. Conventional methods of trapping and directly reducing the boar population have limited their impact in certain areas of the park. Unfortunately, because of the animal’s tremendous reproductive capability the efforts are not successful in reducing the total park population. The technology to completely eradicate the boar from the park is not available at the present time. Park Service research is now aimed at control methods. Estimates of the boar population have ranged upward to 2,000. But no reliable method of counting the boar in the park has yet been devised. University of Tennessee research has indicated that there may be at least 1,000 boars in the national park. Other estimates suggest there might be twice that many. Wild boars can reproduce any month of the year and most females bear a litter of from one to twelve piglets each year. And the wild boar has few enemies in the park, although bears and bobcats may occasionally take the young boars. With such a high reproductive potential, and so few controlling agents, the wild boar population has reached a size that severely alters and damages the park’s natural environment.