Feral pigs reduced at Booubyjan

BMRG project officer Mauricio Montoya with Booubyjan land manager and project participant Erin Lawless.

Dozens of feral pigs have been removed from the Boonara Creek Catchment through a project to control weeds and pests following the severe floods in 2022.

Booubyjan land manager and project participant Erin Lawless said Ricky Rogers Pest Animal Management had done an excellent job.

“He's got a very specific set of skills, and that's enabled him to catch whole family groups of pigs at once,” Erin said.

“In his first trapping here, we caught 32 in one night, and that's because he strategically pre-fed them and was very patient and watched them closely with cameras.

“The benefit of being able to get a huge family group like that is that you're not leaving stragglers behind that get fearful of trapping or hunting. You're not making them shy.

“So the next time when he came back, there weren't pigs that were evading the traps, and he was able to make progress faster.”

The Lawless family and many other producers at Booubyjan, Tansey and some nearby districts were severely impacted by Ex-Tropical Cyclone Seth in early January 2022.

After floods of this magnitude there is a surge in weeds and pests, including feral pigs which destroy crops and pasture, pose a biosecurity threat and are devastating for native wildlife including frogs, lizards, turtles, ground dwelling birds and fish when they foul the waterholes.

BMRG project officer Mauricio Montoya said the control program had been a complete success.

“Ricky has been able to eradicate a good amount of pigs from three properties already, and he is working on the fourth property now,” he said.

“All the landholders are very happy with that, very happy with the result.”

Erin said she hopes the program can be extended.

“Ricky has cleaned up the pigs here at the moment, but further up the creek, they're still going, and they'll eventually breed and move back in here,” she said.

“I think it's also very important to make sure that Ricky’s skill-set is passed on to other people and that he gets to train other professionals because not many people know how to do what Ricky does.”

Assistance for this project is being provided through the jointly funded Commonwealth-State Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements.