‘I thought it was a horse’: Rogue pigs run amok across NSW
Oscar Pearse was on his tractor on his farm near Moree in autumn last year, planting chickpeas, when he looked over his shoulder. Feral pigs were following his furrows, homing in on the seed he had barely put into the ground.
“They are tough, they are aggressive, they are smart,” Pearse said. “They’re an amazing species, they’re just bastards of things.”
Oscar Pearse hunting pigs on his farm near Moree.Credit: Heidi Morris
The episode was the latest encounter in a now three-year war with the pest, triggered by successive La Nina events that created ideal breeding conditions. Pig numbers have exploded, particularly in the north and west of NSW.
A $13 million state government control program that culled more than 100,000 of the animals in nine months was recently extended to wipe out more, but experts say it is nowhere near enough to stop pig numbers growing, and the population is now so big they cannot be eradicated with existing techniques.
Armed farmers in some parts of the state have banded together at night to hunt pigs on foot or hired shooters to kill them from helicopters, but say they constantly have to come up with new strategies to outwit the beasts. They also say feral pigs are starting to emerge from the scrub to encroach on towns and villages, where they could attack humans.
South Coast fisherman Geoff Alford and his wife, Wendy, found a sow swimming across the widest, deepest part of the Clyde River at Nelligen last week.
“I thought it was a horse, a small horse, it was that big,” Alford said. “We thought it was going to get to the other side and collapse, but nup, it barged through the biggest and thickest bush you could imagine ... and kept going.”
The animals are destroying crops and killing cows and sheep, costing the state millions of dollars in lost produce. They are also devastating the environment and can carry diseases dangerous to livestock or humans, such as Japanese encephalitis.
“If we get foot and mouth disease in the country, feral pigs will be the vector that will take it from Cape York all the way to the Mornington Peninsula,” Pearse said.
Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty has committed $26 million to fund the feral pig control program for another two years, including $13.1 million in last week’s budget.
She said the extra funding to reduce pig numbers would help farmers and other landholders, minimise biosecurity risks to livestock, and lower the risk of environmental and ecological damage.
“There’s still more to do, which this essential funding will enable,” Moriarty said.
NSW Farmers said the program would need to run until 2027 to cut the pig population down to a manageable size.
Feral pigs in Oscar Pearse’s paddocks on Sunday. Credit: Heidi Morris
“If we can’t cull 80 per cent of these feral pigs promptly, they will outbreed us,” president Xavier Martin said.
“I’ve been absolutely flattened off a farm motorbike by one – a boar went straight through me … they have been sighted in villages and towns, and when they come into close proximity with people, they’re not beyond attacking people, as I know from personal experience.”
But the Invasive Species Council said the state government control program was bad policy, with no targets or monitoring.
“We will never win the war with our currently available techniques,” advocacy director Jack Gough said. “What we can do is invest our money in targeted ways that protect key environmental and agricultural assets, not just throw money out there and hope someone can kill a few pigs and crow about it.”
Gough said it was difficult to know how many pigs were roaming the state, but would not be surprised if the number was well over a million.
It would make more sense to target areas where pig numbers were small but growing, like south-west Sydney, the North Coast and the Riverina, rather than areas that were already overrun, he added.
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