Wild Pigs and Deer

collaring control fencing feral deer feral pigs

Status: In Progress

Start date: 15 May 2021

Completion date: 1 June 2027

Project code: A-028

Species/Threats: Feral deer, Feral pigs

Summary

Pest animals cause significant damage to agricultural and environmental assets across NSW and elsewhere across Australia. This in turn leads to economic and social impacts.

This project is intended to deliver management solutions (tools and practices) that can be put into the hands of land managers to minimise these impacts.

 

 

 

Objectives

The aims of this project are to:

  1. Establish cost-effective methods for controlling feral pigs, deer, and other vertebrate pests for landholders in NSW.
  2. Evaluate the use of ‘Judas’ (collared) animals to control pigs and deer and may demonstrate how fencing can exclude multiple pests from high-value agricultural sites, including piggeries. Activities may include optimising the Judas animal technique, managing feral pigs around piggeries, assessing and rapidly controlling pig damage in crops, understanding the movements of pigs and deer, developing smart exclusion fences, refining control strategies for peri-urban deer, evaluating the effectiveness of sporting shooters and creating an early-warning system for mouse plagues

 

Project team

Sebastian Comte

Project Lead | NSW DPIRD

Project partners

Scientific publications & reports

Bengsen AJ, Comte S, Crittle T, Holbery S, Marshall D, Marshall L, Parker L and Forsyth DM (2025) Aerial shooting is unlikely to cause dispersal or consistent changes in the movements of feral pigs (Sus scrofa). Wildlife Research 52(6). https://doi.org/10.1071/WR25024

Bengsen AJ, Comte S, Parker L, Forsyth DM and Hampton JO (2024) Site fidelity trumps disturbance: aerial shooting does not cause surviving fallow deer (Dama dama) to disperse. Wildlife Research 51(9). https://doi.org/10.1071/WR24098

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