National Feral Pig Management Plan enters its third year in 2024

Projects to eradicate feral pigs are underway, including using fruiting plum trees to track and trap them in North East Victoria.

Land managers, environmental groups, and community members are being urged to work together as the National Feral Pig Management Plan enters its third year.

It comes as a number of feral pig control projects take place across Victoria, using different techniques and approaches to monitor and eradicate feral pigs.

National management plan co-ordinator Heather Channon said the management plan was about dealing with long term problems via long term solutions, connecting communities with land management groups and organisations such as Agriculture Victoria to share resources and information.

“We’re making sure we’re focusing in on what success looks like, and it’s not always the numbers of pigs but the damage they’re causing, and being able to record that,” Dr Channon said.

The National Feral Pig Management Plan has entered its third year, with a number of different programs underway across the country. Picture: Steve Maxwell.

“We’re focusing in on what success looks like to different land managers. Being able to measure and monitor changes in the damage caused by feral pigs following control actions is key, but this is not easy. More work is needed in this area. While the number of pigs removed is often recorded, it doesn’t mean much if we don’t know the initial population of feral pigs present.”

It’s estimated there are anywhere between 3 million and 25 million feral pigs across Australia, depending on the season, causing more than $100 million worth of damage to the agricultural sector each year as well as killing livestock and potentially spreading disease.

Dr Channon said at least 70 per cent of the national feral population would need to be removed annually to prevent numbers from growing.

“There’s still plenty to do. We are encouraging people to work strategically together and use the right control methods at the right times and at the right scale so that whole mobs of pigs are removed, not just individual animals.”

Dr Channon said sharing of resources and taking a bespoke approach to feral pig management was the focus of the plan, operating in an umbrella fashion.

“The plan doesn’t have operational funding. What we can do is work closely with many stakeholders out there, industry bodies, universities, indigenous organisations, to raise awareness of feral pig issues with the aim to attract support and local funding, to support wherever it’s needed.”

A feral pig management program in the Otways, run in conjunction with the Cape Otway Conservation Ecology Centre, have collared six pigs in the region, using GPS to monitor behaviours of the animals.

Another pig management program in Victoria’s north east is using fruiting plum trees to help track and trap feral pigs.

Department of Energy Environment and Climate Action project officer invasive species Jonathan Melling said the fruit trees were used to entice pigs to an area “creating a perfect spot to set up motion cameras, feeder stations, and traps”.

“Once the whole drove is observed to be regularly feeding, traps are set to trigger, thereby maximising the efficacy of different control methods,” Mr Melling said.

Key locations for the works include around Corryong, Myrtleford and Mansfield.