TACKLING FERAL PIGS

CANEGROWERS Innisfail Grower Services Manager Debra Telford was among the presenters at the inaugural National Feral Pig Conference in Cairns last month.

Organised by the National Feral Pig Action Plan, 200 delegates from across Australia attended the two days of proceedings. 42 presentations covered successes and challenges across a range of monitoring, scientific and management programs.

Debra presented findings from a cluster baiting program held on Innisfail cane farms during last year’s harvest, a program that was featured in the November 2022 issue of Australian Canegrower. Feral pigs are considered abundant and widespread across North and Far North Queensland, creating hundreds of thousands of dollars damage to sugarcane crops every year. Also in attendance at the conference was

CANEGROWERS Innisfail Chairman Joseph Marano and Mulgrave Productivity Committee Chair Glen Anderson. Each was keen to learn from other programs underway in other parts of the country, including the successful eradication of feral pigs on Kangaroo Island.

“There was nothing specific to sugarcane but plenty of ideas were generated for us to work on,” Debra said. “There is not one solution - multiple methods need to be used. It became clear throughout the proceedings that the number of kills doesn’t necessarily represent the impact of a program if population numbers aren’t known to begin with. One of the strong messages was if you can’t monitor, you can’t measure.

“The conference also drilled home the importance of understanding the animals and their seasonal patterns. We found that co-funding models achieved the highest success in terms of project sustainability. This is important because maintaining management methods is crucial.

There are plans to hold future conferences, with delegates agreeing plenty more needs to be done to understand the significant scale of the feral pig problem nationwide, and how best to control them. 

The take-home message was if you stop what you are doing to control feral pigs the numbers will rapidly increase