• A bold plan by a national hunting group aims to collect 10,000 feral pigs' ears as part of a study of the animals.
• The director of the Biodiversity Council says feral pigs are one of the worst invasive species in Australia. 

What's next?

• When the project concludes at the end of the year, the ears will be handed over to scientists to help eradication research. 

A Queensland wildlife ecologist hopes an ambitious project to collect 10,000 feral pig ears will provide data to help manage the damaging pest.

University of Southern Queensland researcher Benjamin Allen is supporting a bold plan by the Australian Pig Doggers and Hunters Association (APDHA) to collect the ears.

"Researchers are not in the habit of collecting 10,000, we just never have the resources to do that," Dr Allen said.

"It's always a very expensive cost … to go and get that data.

"If [APDHA] members are out there doing it, then this might be a match made in heaven.

"[Feral pigs] are … one of the handful of Australia's worst pest animals."

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry estimates feral pigs cost farming more than $100 million each year.

APDHA, which represents hunters who use dogs and guns for feral pig control, is asking members to send in a piece of ear any time they kill a feral pig.

National president Ned Makim said it was an unprecedented collection effort that would be invaluable to future research.

"That number [10,000] is significant because we'd like it to be the biggest wildlife study in the world," he said.

"We're trying to capture some of the knowledge that we hold as hunters."

James Trezise, director of the Biodiversity Council, said feral pigs affected almost all forms of Australian wildlife through digging, foraging, trampling, and predation. 

"They're in the top three for impacts on our threatened wildlife," he said. 

Mr Trezise said a coordinated approach to management was needed as feral animals did not respect state borders.

"Any kind of increased data can be helpful," he said.

"What we need to see with feral pigs is integrated strategic pest management and a lot more investment in their control and eradication." 

A losing battle?

For North Queensland sugarcane grower Ross Lyon, feral pigs have always been an issue on his farm in Lannercost, 130km north-west of Townsville.

"We've been here since 1964 … we've been trying everything," he said.

Despite constant hunting and baiting, feral pig numbers were out of control.

"They're just coming in droves and our average kill for the year is around 450 pigs and we're not even dinting it," he said.

Mr Lyon estimated that every year, pigs are ruining about 500 tonnes of cane, a crop worth $335,000 at current prices.

"It's scandalous, it just makes me sick," he said.

"Last year, they took out about a seven-acre [2.8-hectare] paddock and destroyed it."

Having seen what these animals are capable of, Mr Lyon was not confident the collection program would help him.

"The effort probably of more advantage [would be] to put more research into what pigs want to eat," he said.

"We've tried multitudes of things … but it just never worked."

Barry Kelly has 20 years' experience developing and managing feral pig control programs.

He said despite the efforts of various groups, the problem was worsening.

"It's just getting out of hand, it's getting bigger and bigger," Mr Kelly said.

But he believed the "losing battle" could be turned around with a coordinated approach.

"It [management] needs to be on a national scale," he said.

"There's a lot of good pig projects going on around the country, achieving great results and reducing the numbers, but all the neighbouring areas are not doing anything."

How does it work?

Hunters across Australia have been asked to snip the tips off the ears of the pigs they kill, and to notify the association that they have a sample.

Mr Makim said his group would then send them in a collection bag for the dried ear tip to be posted back.

Once the details of where and when the ear was collected are recorded by the hunters, they will pass the sample on to scientists for any research they desire.

"If they're high-quality samples, then the world's your oyster, you can do all sorts of things," Dr Allen said.

"It [the genetic sample] doesn't have to be big, you don't need something the size of a corn chip, you only need something the size of a lentil.

"If we do have them, then it opens up the door to answering all sorts of questions."

The collection drive will run until the end of the year.

Along with samples that will help future science, Mr Makim hoped the project would challenge stereotypes about hunters.

"The further you get into a metropolitan area, the less contact people have with them," he said.

"They will go with a stereotype of a boofhead who's going around in the bush, wreaking havoc.

"We can't help with the way we look, a lot of us look like boofheads, [but] the reality is pig hunters are just normal people.

"We want to underline that pig hunters are already contributing to the economy and to the environment, and perhaps address some of those misconceptions that are out there."

Diseased, brazen pigs hone in on urban areas, crops

North Queensland Register

July 5, 2024 - 6:00pm

By Steph Allen

Townsville pig hunter Bianca Pollard previously contracted Leptospirosis and says feral pigs rapidly spread disease from property to property across the north. Picture by Bianca Pollard

NEARLY one million feral pigs have been hunted across Queensland over the first half of the Great Australian Pig Hunt.

Australian Pig Doggers and Hunters Association Queensland president Mark Beattie said the successful start of the inaugural 12-month event had been well received amongst the hunting community, eliminating 986,856 threats to native fauna and flora.

As feral pig numbers continue to boom following years of increased breeding from suitable weather, the pests are becoming more widespread and targeting more urban areas and crops.

"They seem to be coming into areas that are more built up. I'm getting feral pigs out of an area now [near the Sunshine Coast] that's got developers building roads," he said.

"They've developed a sweet tooth. They're smashing strawberry crops ... bananas, pineapples, macadamia nuts, mangoes [and] cane."

Mr Beattie said hunters are cracking down on peri-urban management across some of the most densely populated areas around the north coast and the south west.

ADPHA Qld president Mark Beattie says pigs have become more brazen, encroaching on more urban areas. Picture by Mark Beattie

The pigs are moving through cane areas north of Bundaberg and targeting wheat and barley south of Springsure.

"Due to the rainfall we've had [in those areas] ... the pigs are everywhere because the weather and the crops have been so good," he said.

"A lot of times you can't use firearms for obvious reasons because of houses. Poison ... if you can find specific-specific [poison] and I usually use dogs and traps.

"The damage they do is astronomical. One method [of elimination] doesn't work. There are so many different ways to try and stop them ... aerial shooting, trapping, hunting, baiting, everything."

Defense force Australia paramedic Bianca Pollard manages a property in Townsville and helps eliminate pigs that hide in two national parks within 50-100km.

The pigs have learnt to hide amongst the Brahman in neighbouring properties to avoid capture, and in hilly areas of national parks, out of sight of rangers.

Ms Pollard said increased numbers of pigs not only cause producers to have to vaccinate cattle more to prevent disease through exposure to mange, abscess-riddled and sickly pigs, but also impact on the local wildlife through wallowing.

The pigs wallow in billabongs and other water ways and stir up sediment, in turn impacting on the animals that drink from the water and causing detrimental effects to their reproduction.

Bianca Pollard takes blood and swab samples for disease management testing. Picture by Bianca Pollard

"Bird and lizard eggs [can't calcify] ... because the bacteria weakens the shell and it breaks down [and the young] dies," she said.

"When it happens over two nesting periods, the birds stop laying because they know something's wrong and they'll move out of the area."

Since managing pigs in her local area, she has seen a family of brolgas return, as well as bandicoots which are now "flourishing" and Black Palm cockatoos.

Ms Pollard said her background in trauma medicine inspired her passion for sustainable disease management, which has driven her to desire to help manage the pests.

"They cause a huge impact to the environment that we either farm or use for the production of food, whether it's cattle, sheep or crops to feed Australia," she said.

"Or if they're in a national park and there's an endangered bird in that area, feral animals are unbalancing that food chain and upsetting the natural balance."

She spends a lot of time trying to educate both sides of the "greenie" debate after growing up hunting "destructive" wild goats in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia, trapping rabbits, buffalo and deer, and moving to feral pigs when she moved to North Queensland.

Feral pigs are seeing a boost in numbers after years of positive breeding weather and seclusion in national parks. Picture by ACM

"Every bit helps. I'm just trying to do my bit," she said.

"I grew up in an Indigenous community and the Elders taught me everything about sustainability and the environment and making it work ... for the future."

Ms Pollard uses dogs and knives, giving pigs a quick death through sticking them after they are bailed up by her dogs.

"It's a quick kill, very humane ... [not like in the killing of] cattle for meat sold in Woolworths. Bullets are too expensive ... they use electrocution," she said.

"Every pig hunter does it the same way [straight through the ribs and into the heart and lungs] ... which is good because it shows the education has gone all the way down the chain."

Darwin national parks allow the removal of pigs by licensed hunters, which Ms Pollard said "works a treat".

"You might find one pig wandering from another property, that's how efficient it is," she said.

"Then you come into Queensland and you can't go into the national parks ... so they're hiding in them because they have water supplies, food and they're trashing them ... and then they get into cane properties."

Over the first six months of 2024, around 986,856 pigs are estimated to have been killed by Queensland recreational hunters.

Around 3,289,030 have been killed nationwide.

The sows recorded in the competition so far have blocked a further 79,363 sows from being born in the next 12 months.

Mr Beattie said the removal of feral pigs not only prevents damage or destruction to native flora and fauna but also removes the spread of disease.

"African Swine Fever for instance is a huge worry for Australia's economy. If it gets into piggeries, there's roughly $5 million wiped off the map," he said.

ADPHA also created the 10,000 Ear Project challenge, where hunters clip off and send away pig ears to help determine what disease is in certain areas, breeding patterns and numbers to help hunters zone in on areas to target.

Hunters as citizen scientists under scrutiny

Click below to listen...

June 15, 2024 

NSW Parliament hears of pig hunter successes

See link below...

June 6, 2024 

'Biggest wildlife study in Australia' gains traction among pig hunters

The North Queensland Register

Updated March 6 2024 - 9:56am, first published 7:00am

By Steph Allen

Inverell pig hunter Ned Makim says hunters have an untapped wealth of knowledge that could help researchers in the management of the feral pig problem. Picture: Ned Makim

FOR pig hunters across the country, the environmental, economic and social implications of the wild pests are common knowledge.

Wild pigs are notorious for damaging pastures, land and crops from sowing to harvest, degrading waterholes and wetlands, preying on native species, and spreading disease, parasites and invasive plants.

In 2021, the Queensland government estimated that the state had up to 2.3m feral pigs, and stated that they were "among Queensland's most widespread and damaging pest animals".

Now a new initiative is helping to not only tackle the growing pig problem, but also bring a scientific look into the way the pigs live, breed, and populate.

National president of the Australian Pig Doggers and Hunters Association Ned Makim was behind the 10,000 Ears Project which launched on March 1.

"The APDHA (constituted in Queensland 20 years ago) exists to represent what we call legal, ethical hunters and one of the tasks that we have is within a changing world and a more urbanised Australia, to explain the relevance of pig hunting," he said.

The APDHA is celebrating 20 years in 2024. Picture: APDHA

"This year, leading up to APDHA's 20^th anniversary, we thought 'we're on every committee, every pest management group, we liaise with government and with cops about illegal hunting'.

"I spoke at the Feral Pig Conference in Cairns last year on the position of hunters as citizen scientists. I said 'it's a great resource that no-one's using. There is more to us than killing a lot of pigs...we can gather data, you can pick our brains...collectively we have hundreds and hundreds of years of pig behaviour and biology sitting in hunters' minds'."

Spurred on by a positive reception from the academic community, Mr Makim began the Great Australian Pig Hunt on January 1, encouraging hunters to log their monthly kills to infer a national figure.

"On two months, the inference is that recreational hunters have killed 1.74m pigs throughout Australia...the average rate was 19.8 (pigs per hunter) in January, and 19.56 in February," he said.

The statistics were coming in thick and fast, and buoyed by the strong participation rate, Mr Makim quickly saw room for more growth within the academic world for further studies.

"We spoke to Associate Professor Ben Allen at the University of Southern Queensland. He's a wildlife researcher...he said 'can you get 1000 ear tips?' I said 'I can get 10,000'...and he said 'if you can do that, it could be the biggest wildlife study in Australia'," Mr Makim said.

Up to 30 hunters are currently taking part in the 10,000 Ears Project across the country. Picture: APDHA

Thus, the 10,000 Ear Project began, kicking off with significant uptake by the pig hunting community.

"They cut off the tip of the ear...put it in a brown paper bag to dry out. Once they're dry, they're no longer a bio-security issue in terms of transport or being hazardous," Mr Makim said.

The hunters must snip off a tip of the ear, place it in a brown paper bag, and write on the bag the date the pig was killed, its sex, whether it was breeding age, and the nearest town.

There are up to 30 hunters collecting ear samples from each pig they catch.

The samples are delivered to a central location for longer-term storage, awaiting a partnership between APDHA and an organisation with "the requisite expertise or finance, or both, to have the samples analysed".

A report collated by Mr Makim stated that the participation rate of 56 hunters consistently collecting 18 pig ear samples a month for 10 months could achieve 10,000 samples.

DNA can reveal information on breeding and breeding habits, disease susceptibility and history, and movement paths through breeding history. 

The DNA samples could provide a "bank of information which can be accessed for research", assist in obtaining grants to "administer the program longer term and facilitate a major analytical exercise" to potentially rank as one of country's largest pest animal studies, elevate pig hunters from "incidental suppliers of data to active field staff of a major research project", and establish the APDHA as a "genuine research driver in the feral pig space".

Through communications with Mr Allen, Mr Makim discovered that the ear tips can reveal information about pig breeding, why one boar becomes dominant, information for the potential of a disease outbreak, as well as the "biggest and best thing" - the revelation of the shape of a breeding cohort of pigs.

"Pigs don't just live in a spot and graduate out in a circle...they follow land forms....they follow gullies, ridges and water courses. The best control methods would be following the area where all those pigs are related," he said.

"It would be significant if you have African swine fever...which could pop up in a place like Charters Towers, for example. The initial instinct for controllers...is to throw a circle around Charters Towers...to manage and contain the disease. But that has never worked when dealing with a wild population.

"They won't adhere to circular movement, they'll go where the breeding pattern goes...if they're all related in some way in varying degrees, they'll go further along the Burdekin. Then that's the shape the control method should take.

There has been a massive increase in feral pig numbers this year due to the wet weather. Picture: APDHA

"That's one of the things that could pop up (from this study). It could make things more effective. Pigs tend to live up in the hills and come down to feed...hunters know what, but if we can show that through DNA, it will codify the knowledge already held by pig hunters and provide information...for disease outbreak."

Hunters from across the country have come on board to help with the project, ranging from Weipa to the Gulf and up into the Northern Territory.

After widespread heavy rainfall across the state this year, Mr Makim said he had seen a "massive increase" in pig numbers.

"As there is every time there's a season like this," he said.

"They can breed three times a year. My experience in temperate Australia is that the main breeding times are...when sows coming into season in the first week of May. You can see it...or notice that the really big boars that you never see...they appear in the middle of the day.

Researchers have requested that hunters snip off a 20c piece-sized tip of the pig's ear as part of the project. Picture: APDHA

"The second season is the first week of September...and in a really good season, the first of January. A sow may have 10 babies and rear eight, and half of those are going to be sows. In a good season, the governing factor is weight not age, so if they're 30kg, they'll come into season quickly...in as little as three months...and she'll breed again...plus her first lot of females are all having babies...that causes an exponential rise because they breed like rabbits.

"It's an absolute time bomb. Yay for hunters, because they're putting the pressure on them but you're never going to get rid of pigs in Australia."

Mr Makim said there are currently studies that are looking at breeding out mosquitoes by engineering their DNA to only produce males.

"If you want to do the same with pigs, it would take 200 years to breed only male pigs in Australia. But in 200 years, nature has a way of finding a way," he said.

"We have to find things that will work now. At risk is the export meat industry, food production, and the immediate threats to that."

NSW Police does not support a ban on pig-dogging, despite reports