Feral plan has Whitsundays producers happy as pigs in mud

Land Protection Officer Bren Fuller presented his council's success story to a Feral Pig Action Plan stakeholder forum in June, highlighting the value of aerial shooting programs and of having buffer zones at the Goorganga and Abbott Point-Caley Valley wetlands.

Both are nationally listed wetlands, one bounded by ocean and sugarcane farms, the other tucked in behind the Abbott Point coal terminal, with grazing and horticultural neighbours.

One of the former is cattleman Ralph Cox, who owns the 10,925ha Goorganga Station just to the south of Proserpine, running 5000 head of cattle.

His swampy floodplain country could be where the phrase 'like a pig in mud' was coined - as well as always having feed for pigs, they're pushed down the local creeks as the cane cut progresses each season.

Mr Cox said the pigs were very destructive, digging up much of his country, and he'd had a strong reliance on 1080 poison to control pig numbers for many years.

"Since the council started aerial shooting, we haven't used it," he said.

"Using 1080 was a big drama - there was a day to kill and prepare the meat and then two days to put it out.

"This seems to be a lot more effective, and I don't like using poison that much.

"It's a good back-up if you've got exotic diseases to deal with, but the older pigs were getting cunning."

Mr Cox said while a couple of landholders had initially held back from the shooting program, they were now taking part, which was the program's biggest success.

"If someone doesn't do it, it doesn't work because the pigs migrate very quickly," Mr Cox said, adding that the disturbance from the chopper was minimal.

"Our cattle hardly move when it's above them," he said.

Because he expected feral pigs to always be in the tropical landscape, Mr Cox said it was important not to take the foot off the pedal as far as funding went.

"It's a management thing, you've got to do it every year," he said. "You can't say, there's no funding, let's leave it a year."

Using economic modelling, Mr Fuller estimated a population of 300 pigs at Goorganga had been causing around $382,000 of agricultural and environmental damage, and using the same modelling, to cost agriculture and the environment $512,000 a year at Caley Valley.

That was based on pig populations of 300 and 400 respectively.

Aerial shooting has removed 443 pigs from Goorganga and 867 from Caley Valley in 10 years, and thanks to funding from the Wet Tropics NRM in 2021, a buffer zone consisting of an extra 10 properties enclosing 30,000ha was included at the latter wetland.

"We were able to convince the NRM group and landholder stakeholders who'd contributed financially to spend money where it was needed, not just on their patch, to create the buffer," Mr Fuller said.

"It's a big part of how we got to where we are now.

"We're now to a point where, the last couple of shoots, we've shot only one to two pigs on the wetland itself and we're down to hardly any damage.

"Landowners are now describing their country as 'looking a million dollars'."

Mr Fuller said the takeaways were to look beyond your own fence to work on solutions like a buffer zone, and to be consistent.

"Programs are funded, they do a great job, then people walk away," he said. "Then you're back to square one."