Aidan Curtis
FERAL pigs are causing headaches for South East landholders, with Limestone Coast Landscape Board (LCLB) seeking cooperation to keep populations under control.
In the last 18 months, LCLB operations manager Mike Stevens has seen three separate outbreaks of feral pigs in the region.
He said intelligence pointed towards the pigs being deliberately released into the environment, which has serious potential impacts.
“They’re not escaped domestic farmed animals, and landholders have contacted us to say they don’t keep pigs, they’ve come from somewhere,” he said.
“The unknown is the question of why people are doing this, it’s unknown if it’s for personal use or just a few animals or there is a purposeful attempt to establish a feral pig population.
“[We’re] encouraging anyone with any information to definitely pass it on to us because the last thing we want is wild, feral pigs establishing across the region.”
Mr Stevens said there were three main risks to feral pigs in the landscape, which encompassed biosecurity, farm productivity and environmental impacts.
“Environmentally, they’re quite a significant disruption to the landscape, trashing wetlands, ploughing areas, they’re quite predatory as well,” he said.
“For livestock production as well, they can predate on lambs, so you definitely wouldn’t want them in prime lamb areas – they can plough paddocks as well, so significant loss of pasture.
“If feral pigs got released that had Japanese encephalitis, if they were infected animals, and there are known populations that do have Japanese encephalitis, that could have absolutely catastrophic impacts to the pork industry.”
While two of the outbreaks have been removed from the environment, Mr Stevens said efforts are continuing to finish off the third outbreak.
“The largest population of the 70-80 animals, we’re still actively monitoring it with remote cameras,” he said.
“We’re down to the last handful of animals and the Landscape Board is not going to stop until we’ve got all of them.”
Aside from deliberate releases, Mr Stevens said there were challenges coming out of Victoria with feral pig populations living on the other side of the border.
“That’s probably the biggest threat in terms that we have at the moment, without the deliberate releases happening as well,” he said.
“If the populations aren’t controlled over there, they’ll breed up to the point they disperse.”
Mr Stevens encouraged anyone who spots feral pigs in the landscape to contact LCLB.
