On 14 June 2024, the NSW Government announced $13.1 million in 2024/25 to continue to support additional effort to manage feral pigs and build on the success of the prior year’s 2023/24 Feral Pig Program (FPP). This included $8.129 million of new funding to prioritise feral pig management, and $5.618 million from the Special Purpose Pest Management Rate (Pest Levy), contributed by landholders, to manage other priority pest animal species.
Local Land Services delivered the 2024/25 package through the Feral Pig and Pest Program (FPPP) 2024/25, with the goal being to control feral pigs and other pest animals to reduce their impact across the state.
As part of the FPPP 2024-25 Measurement and Evaluation Plan, an external evaluation was conducted between April and October 2025 by Clear Horizon Consulting.
External evaluation summary
An external project evaluation assessed:
- the program’s impact and its contributions to intended short-term outcomes
- the appropriateness of the program’s design and implementation.
The evaluation used a variety of qualitative and quantitative data to inform the findings and recommendations:
- 11 regional reflection workshops with 42 participants
- 3 statewide reflection workshops with 17 participants
- 125 documents reviewed
- 2 surveys.
Key evaluation findings
The evaluation focused on 4 key areas.
Outcomes
Local short-term feral pig and other pest animal knockdown
- The program effectively culled a substantial number of feral pig and pest animals in target areas, contributing to short-term knockdowns of local populations.
- It is not possible to quantify the impact on state or regional feral pig and pest animal population levels, due to known challenges with gaining accurate long-term state feral pig population data.
Reduced local impacts to priority agricultural and environmental assets
- The local short-term population knockdowns achieved resulted in some progress being made in protecting agricultural and environmental assets in targeted areas.
- However, due to the short program timeframe, the limited uptake of the photo point monitoring and limitations associated with the survey, the true contribution of the program to asset protection cannot be fully determined.
Best practice coordinated and integrated pest animal control
- The program has integrated the delivery of aerial and ground control activities, built the capacity of landholders to undertake control, and collaborated with public land managers to coordinate cross-agency control activities.
Communications to increase land manager awareness of control techniques, and General Biosecurity Duty responsibilities
- A substantial volume of communications content produced with a focus on building land manager awareness of control techniques, impacts of pest animals and General Biosecurity Duty responsibilities.
Design
The design of the Feral Pig and Pest Program brought together two distinct but related sub-programs – the Pest Sub-Program (PSP) and the Feral Pig Sub-Program (FPSB).
The additional funding for the FPSP supported regions to further reduce the impact of widespread feral pig populations on key assets, in alignment with their Regional Strategic Pest Animal Management Plans (RSPAMPs), with the majority of regions adopting an ‘asset-based protection’ approach to feral pig management.
The bottom-up approach to the design of regional programs enabled regions to tailor project activities and stakeholder engagement decisions to their region.
Process
- Governance arrangements effectively supported program design and delivery.
- Implementation of the program was aligned with Local Land Services frameworks and processes.
- Adaptive management of funding across the PSP and FPSP was limited by the financial arrangements. The program was however delivered on time and on budget with a reduced underspend from last year.
Learnings
- Enablers included regional delivery staff, resourcing and funding of the program, central coordination and support, engagement activities, and relationships with landholders.
- Challenges included staff resourcing associated with engaging suitable experienced staff on a short-term basis, landholder engagement, timeframes, and program funding.
- For the one region that piloted contracted aerial shooting team (CAST) during the program, it was effective in delivering aerial shoots when staffing was otherwise limited.
- Under a business as usual funding scenario, most regional delivery teams indicated that they would continue to prioritise engaging with landholders and landholder groups and would continue to seek to include the provision of incentives such as grain, bait and/or access to traps.