“These pests are bigger than the people trying to control them,” NSW Farmers Association president Xavier Martin said.
“There’s reports of feral pigs weighing well over 100 kilograms charging through the paddocks, trashing food crops and killing calves and lambs at the drop of a hat.”
The association is pushing for increased funding for feral pig culls in the upcoming state budget.
Martin said farmers had welcomed the government’s efforts to control the feral pig population, but warned the annual cull needed to amount to “many millions a year”.
“More than 77,000 pigs have been culled by the state’s Feral Pig Program since October last year – and while this has made a dent in the population, we’ve still got millions of pigs ruining production on our prime agricultural land,” Martin said.
It looks like tinned spaghetti but it kills 2500 people a year
“Farmers have been outnumbered, paddocks have been destroyed, and despite our best efforts, no one-man band can get on top of these animals when the numbers are just so wildly out of control.”
The NSW Department of Primary Industries estimates that nearly 70 per cent of the state’s feral pig population should be “removed” every year to prevent a numbers explosion.
Baiting and aerial shooting are the usual control options, along with trapping and ground shooting as supports.