Feral pig management

Feral pigs can damage crops, pastures, water holes and fencing. They can cause economic loss in agricultural production. Every landholder has a General Biosecurity Duty to reduce risks caused by feral pigs.

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Local Land Services is currently delivering the 2024-25, $13.1 million Feral Pig and Pest Program on behalf of the NSW Government to support landholders across NSW to control feral pigs and pest animals.

Feral Pig and Pest Program 2024-25
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Feral pigs are an invasive species introduced to Australia as domestic livestock. A pig can be identified as being feral if it:

  • was born or has lived in the wild
  • demonstrates wild and erratic behaviour
  • is not domesticated
  • has long coarse hair, an elongated snout, or sloping hindquarters.

At any time, you can contact your Local Land Services Biosecurity Officer for advice on controlling feral pigs on your land.

Impact of feral pigs

Feral pigs cause damage to crops, pastures, water holes, and fencing. They can cause significant economic losses to agricultural production through:

  • predation of livestock
  • environmental damage.
  • disease and parasite introduction.

Feral pigs are a major potential host of several exotic diseases, such as foot-and-mouth disease. They also pose a disease risk to humans (eg brucellosis).

Feral pigs damage the land. They:

  • create significant soil disturbance, altering drainage
  • increase turbidity and sedimentation
  • greatly assist the spread of weeds.

Feral pig populations can be both stationary and transient.

  • Weather conditions and food availability affect the movement of feral pigs throughout a landscape.
  • Feral pigs' home range is determined by habitat type, food supply, size of individual animals, and population density.
  • In many habitats, there is a seasonal trend of movement between specific areas depending on the current food supply.
  • Even if disturbed, feral pigs will not move far and will readily return to their home ranges.

How to control feral pigs

There are a number of methods for controlling feral pigs, outlined here. Always plan ahead and seek professional advice before using any of these methods. 

Baiting

Baiting using Sodium fluoroacetate (1080) is an option for some peri-urban and rural properties where the Pesticide Control Order (PCO) allows.

Landholders must hold relevant chemical qualifications to use poisons in NSW. A particular PCO consideration is distance restrictions, which require bait to be laid at least:

  • 150m from your own habitation
  • 500m from another habitation
  • 20m from a domestic water supply
  • 5m off a boundary fence.

Another poison option available for feral pigs in NSW is Hoggone, a sodium nitrite based bait product. This product is available from rural stores, however restrictions on its use still apply. 

Baiting should be done in bait sites, in areas where pigs are known to feed.

Free feeding prior to poisoning is essential to attract as many pigs as possible to the area. It also gives an estimate of how much bait is needed and the ability to monitor the feed uptake to ensure no non-target animals are impacted.

Aerial Shooting

Aerial shooting targets populations as a whole and is recognised as a highly effective control technique in quickly reducing feral pig populations. Follow up with ground-based control is needed to ensure ongoing reduction of numbers.

There are private companies across the state who offer this service. Local Land Services, at times, coordinates and delivers aerial control programs to achieve broadscale knockdown of pest animals. 

Ground Shooting
  • Rules around firearms use apply.
  • Ground shooting is an option in rural areas and some peri-urban areas.
  • Landholders can shoot feral pigs on their properties. Professional licensed shooters can undertake ground shooting in any landscape on a landholder's behalf.
  • You must be very careful when dealing with pigs as they are easily frightened and will be scared away from a site if disturbed. If pigs are disturbed, they will move into new areas and cause more damage.
Trapping
  • Trapping is an effective control technique for catching large numbers of feral pigs. When undertaken consistently and properly, it can reduce population numbers dramatically.
  • This technique is used where the 1080 PCO conditions cannot be met or the off-target risk is too high.
  • Trapping is also an effective follow-up control after a 1080 baiting program or an aerial shoot.
  • Trap designs will vary on landscape and pig density and can range from large silo traps to smaller panel traps to suit landholder needs and increase effectiveness.
  • Traps need to be checked every 24 hours.
  • Livestock should be removed from the area so they don’t eat the feed from the trap.
  • Private professional pest controllers are available to undertake this work on a landholder's behalf. Local Land Services can provide traps to landholders, but a landholder will need a firearm to humanely destroy the animal.
Fencing
  • Feral pig-proof fencing can be installed around assets such as domestic pigs or areas of high conservation priority.
  • Maintenance is essential to effective fencing.

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Vertebrate Pesticide Induction Training

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Video series: tips for feral pig control

Create a feral pig management plan

Effective control of local feral pig populations can be achieved, although it may take weeks to a few months. These efforts will need to be followed up when populations re-establish the area.

A broad landscape approach can achieve long term gains and bring feral pig numbers down to manageable levels. Read through all the following before creating your plan.

Assess your property

Start by identifying and mapping the location of feral pigs and the extent of their impact on your property. Discuss with your neighbours your concerns and gauge feral pig impacts they are experiencing.

Things to look for include:

  • sightings
  • predation of lambs
  • rooting (digging of soil for underground food such as roots and bulbs)
  • crop and fence damage
  • pads (a feral pig trail)
  • tracks and scats
  • wallows (indentations in waterbodies)
  • mud rubs and tusk marks on vegetation and infrastructure
  • nests.
4:25

Know the signs of feral pigs

Read transcript
Video transcript

Know the signs of feral pigs

G'day, my name's Heidi and I'm a Biosecurity Officer.
I work for the North Coast Local Land Services
and my role is to assist landholders in managing pest animals.
Often I help control feral pigs.
Like any pest animal, it's important that you
control them when you first see signs of them.
So let me introduce you to the feral pig and what
signs you should be looking for on your property.
[Music]
Feral pigs are prolific breeders and can have up to two litters
with four to ten piglets every 12 to 15 months.
So their numbers can increase significantly.
They are incredibly adaptive and can live in a wide range of environments.
Eating both plants and meat.
So what are the signs to look for if you think you might have feral pigs?
Rooting.
It's usually the first sign you may notice.
Starting with small shallow dig sites and in a
couple of days becoming large-scale dig sites.
Pigs turn over large amounts of soil when rooting for food.
30 to 50 pigs can turn over a couple of football fields in just one night.
So they're quite destructive.
[Music]
Pigs often create pads when traveling to and from water sources.
And it's a good way of identifying where their feeding and bedding areas are.
Their tracks can often be identified from other cloven hooved animals
by the two widely spread dew claws at the back of their foot.
You will find pig faeces both on and off their pads.
And with close examination you may find
fragments of bone, grain, plants, wool and hair.
Wallows.
Pigs wallow by laying around in wet moist areas.
They're often an oval shape and they can show
you how recent and how often pigs have been around.
Crop damage.
Feral pigs damage crops by eating, trampling and bedding in them.
They also uproot seeds and seedlings.
Building nests.
Just before giving birth a sow will make a nest.
And if the vegetation is long and grassy the nests can be quite big.
[Music]
Fence damage.
Pigs will push through fences enlarging a hole under the bottom wire
creating a gap for other animals to use.
And often you'll find mud and hair on the wires.
Mud rub.
Often after pigs have been wallowing you will
find mud rubs up against trees and fence posts.
You'll see mud and pig bristles on this site.
Pigs often kill and eat native wildlife and also our livestock.
They're great disease transporters including brucellosis, leptospirosis,
Japanese encephalitis and liver fluke.
If we ever had an outbreak of African swine fever or foot and mouth disease
pigs are a massive transporter of these diseases.
So if you see any signs of feral pigs please report this.
And there's a couple of ways you can go about this.
You can go to the Feral Scan website, upload
any photos and areas where you've seen feral pigs.
Or you can download the Feral Scan app onto your phone.
And do exactly the same thing.
You could also just give us a call here at North Coast Local Land Services
as we are here to help you control your feral
pig problem with a range of control options.
[Music]
So remember pest animal control is best done over large areas.
So try and get your neighbors involved.
The more properties under feral pig control the better the chance
that the feral pig population will be reduced for longer periods of time.

Set goals and work with your neighbours

Work with your neighbours to determine what resources (e.g. time, money and expertise) you have and what you want to achieve.

  • Revisit the step above on Identifying control methods.
  • Prepare an action plan.
  • Start with short term goals (for a 12-month program) and how you will continue an ongoing program to ensure that the impacts are mitigated.

In discussion with your neighbours/community, consider joining or starting formalised groups such as Landcare or pest control associations. For example, see Feral Fighters.

Consult with Local Land Services

Consult your nearest Biosecurity Officer who has the knowledge and experience to assist you to manage feral pigs and other invasive species by:

  • providing advice
  • supplying baits and traps
  • assisting with coordinating baiting programs.
3:46

Working with Local Land Services to control feral pigs

With foot-and-mouth disease nearing our borders, get on top of your feral pig control now to minimise the potential spread.

Read transcript
Video transcript

Working with Local Land Services to control feral pigs

When you see a pig running around and she’s a sow she could have up to ten or fifteen suckers and in no time at all that fifteen are breeding and it just multiplies very, very quickly.

When you get wet summers pigs just explode.

It happened in the seventies, and eighties it’s happening again now The last three years we’ve had a really terrific season and so the numbers have bred up now it’s turned a little bit dry they’ve moved into our paddocks and they’re starting to attack out lambs and we want to control that  before we start lambing again so we get a better percentage.

It’s important to me because of the damage they’ll do we’re breeding goats, and they’ll just eat the kids I’ve seen it where they’ve just eaten everything the ewes and the lambs.

Feral pigs aren’t just impacting landholders’ enterprises the parasites, a number of different diseases that are out there Leptospirosis Brucellosis Japanese Encephalitis.

If we get FMD come into the country we know that these animals are going to be a key part in distributing it around into livestock and stuff like that so we want to make sure that we’ve done everything within our power working with landholders that in the worst case scenario where FMD comes to our shores there’s going to be a minimal impact on our enterprises.

Yeah, pigs carry a lot of diseases Foot and Mouth is a bad one if it got into Australia it’d just wipe our industry completely out so we’ve got to do something about them and destroy everyone we possibly can.

There’s a range of different options to control feral pigs.

You’ve got 1080 grain baiting, 1080 meat baiting, trapping, shooting probably the best is to have the range of options all utilised because not one will be the be all, and end all so a range of options is your best option to control feral pigs.

The 1080 is the best way I’ve found to get them down to a controllable number then try your traps dogs, shooting.

I don’t think it’s just a one-off thing a bit like when you do your wild dog baiting you’ve got to keep on top of it it’s not hard work but it pays of in the long run because you don’t have a lot of feral pigs.

That’s the key in all of this is to reduce numbers keep them to a minimum level and keep on going it won’t just stop after one lot of baiting you know, we need to do it again to make sure that we’re controlling them.

So that’s the importance of these biosecurity measures.

It would be nice to see a lot of the numbers of the feral pig population drop because we’ve had the three years of good seasons they’ve just bred and rapidly bred everywhere so it would be awesome if we could get some more people around the area to start doing this the free-feeding and the pig baiting.

Yeah, I’d encourage everyone to have a crack at it the 1080 have a crack at it and get into it you’ll get results real good results if you do the work.

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