An update from the National Feral Pig Action Plan
Thanks to Dr Heather Channon, National Feral PIg Management Coordinator for providing this update to our Centre. Heather is based with Australian Pork Limited and funded through the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment. Our Centre is pleased to be part of this initiative as a member of the steering group.
The National Feral Pig Action Plan (the Plan) is being developed in response to the significant threats that feral pig populations impose on environmental, agricultural, cultural and social assets across Australia.
The purpose of the Plan is to promote and support private and public land managers to work together in community-led groups to increase the effectiveness of existing efforts and use of resources to reduce impacts from feral pigs. It is aiming to do this through the delivery of effective, coordinated, sustained and humane best practice management to suppress feral pig populations.
The Plan is well on track to be submitted to the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE) on 15 January 2021.
We’re currently finalising feedback and designing its presentation. Once this draft Plan is submitted to DAWE, it will be made available for review and comment via the National Feral Pig Action Plan’s website, with our stakeholders notified of this via our monthly newsletter. If you would like to be placed on our distribution list, please sign up here.
As part of the Plan’s development, a number of virtual stakeholder forums have been held – the presentations are available here. We’ve also recently released outcomes from our survey that was held to seek stakeholder input into the Plan, gain information on the costs and impacts from feral pigs by land managers as well as understand what control methods are being used.
A key finding from the survey was that 49 per cent of land managers want to see the feral pig population to be suppressed, with a further 20 per cent looking for the population to be eradicated. This is reflected in the vision of the draft Plan. Thanks to all those who participated and provided feedback – this has been extremely valuable.
Another initiative that we have been working on is the development of our Information Hub that will also be housed on our website once it is launched in mid January 2021. The purpose of this Hub is to provide a portal to showcase the many feral pig management activities underway around Australia as well as research projects.
Please get in touch with me via email or call 0423 056 045 to submit programs and projects for inclusion into the Hub.