Native wildlife, biosecurity and farm security threatened by feral pigs, hunters

Feral pig numbers are “about to explode” if authorities do not swiftly move to eradicate them from southwest Victoria.

Costly protection: Stuart and Anja Croft with the $35,000 pig fence on their Heywood property. Picture: Karla Northcott

FERAL  pig numbers are “about to explode” if authorities do not swiftly move to eradicate them from southwest Victoria.

Heywood farmer Stuart Croft said many of his fellow farmers were afraid to speak out about the rising threat from feral pigs, because of fears about getting on the wrong side of “yahoo hunters” who frequented the area chasing the invasive species.

The Weekly Times reported last year that Forest Fire Management Victoria had found rogue hunters had illegally released feral pigs on public land with the intent of breeding up numbers for hunting.

Feral pigs pose a biosecurity risk to farms, but recent CSIRO report also found invasive species are the main cause of extinction of native Australian animals. Yet southwest locals are concerned government authorities are not doing enough to protect the environment.

Mr Croft and his wife, Anja, run 11,000 ewes across properties at Heywood, Nigretta, ­Pigeon Ponds and Balranald in NSW.

They first saw feral pigs at Heywood 18 months ago and numbers have rapidly increased since then.

The Crofts have built a $35,000, 183cm-high exclusion fence along 1.5km of their road frontage to keep pigs and kangaroos out.

“I hate the look of it, and it’ll create issues for the movement of native wildlife, but we fear we will have to eventually fence the whole place with it to prevent feral pigs from coming in,” he said.

Mr Croft said he was concerned about the pigs damaging the farm, posing a biosecurity and safety risk and harming the environment. He was also worried about his young children’s safety, if they happened across a feral pig while out on the farm with their dogs.

“We’re also concerned about the yahoo hunters coming in from Geelong or Warrnambool; local hunters are really good and they do an effective job, but you get these other blokes coming from elsewhere and to be honest, they’re not always the type of people you want hooning around; it’s the cowboy factor,” he said.

“It’s a difficult one for the department but they need to do more now to tackle this … people releasing the pigs need to be prosecuted.

“We’re at the pointy end of the wedge. Feral pig numbers are about to explode.”

A DELWP spokeswoman said feral pigs were first noticed in the southwest in 2015 and their numbers and distribution was increasing with new populations on public and private land at Heywood, Portland, Dartmoor and Casterton.

FFMV district manager Mark Mellington said their focus was containing feral pigs to “established locations and eradicating new populations” through trapping and working with landowners.

“Since programs began in 2015, we’ve trapped 208 feral pigs, including 54 of these trapped during (the past) financial year,” he said.