Feral pig management for disease incursions: potential approaches and challenges

Abstract

In Australia, feral pigs (Sus scrofa) are overwhelmingly viewed as a devastating agricultural and environmental pest, with increasingly coordinated control efforts conducted by producers or pest managers to manage their impacts. Feral pigs also carry pathogens of human health significance and contribute to the persistence and transmission of a range of endemic diseases or pathogens of livestock and wildlife. Importantly, feral pigs are the invasive species of most concern in Australia as potential vectors of exotic disease. The wide geographic distribution, habitat range and population densities of feral pig populations, together with limitations of control applications, offers considerable challenges to implementing effective disease management strategies. There is a variety of control methods (including shooting, trapping, poisoning, exclusion fencing, recreational and commercial harvesting) currently available, but optimal strategies for their use are often lacking or require field-testing to better inform end-users. More novel solutions, like those currently used or under development in Europe for wild boar may also have a role to manage feral pig movements but require careful consideration for applications under local conditions.

This presentation and paper briefly discusses current and novel methods to manage feral pig population size or movements, and the potential responses of feral pigs to control. This is used to highlight feral pig management challenges in the event of an exotic disease outbreak affecting feral pigs in Australia using African Swine Fever (ASF) as an example.