Pest Inquiry
Pest Inquiry
Feral Pigs
Introduction
Feral pigs are a bad pest in the bay of plenty and massive in New Zealand they roam roughly one third of the country leaving a bomb sight wherever they go.
Pigs were first Introduced to NZ in 1769 by a French explorer by the name of De Surville. De Surville brought the pigs over for the Maori. Then later in the 1800s pigs domesticated and became part of life in New Zealand. Pigs are very bad and destroy the native bush.
What Are Feral Pigs?
Feral pigs are descendants from the domesticated pig species. Feral pigs are smaller, more muscular and have a shorter snout and usually are a brown/black/grey colour. You will find feral pigs all over New Zealand - at one point in 1996 they were estimated to cover about 34% of land area in New Zealand.
Where Do Feral Pigs Live?
Feral pigs love our native bush as this map shows where in The Bay Of Plenty pigs live.⏬
Feral pigs love New Zealand's native bush. Pigs love big vast arrears NZ’s Bracken fern which is a fern that looks ⏪ like this.There are not many large arrears of Bracken fern because of feral pigs.
What Can We Do Or Do More Of To Mitigate The Deleterious Effects Of Feral Pigs In The Bay Of Plenty?
If we really want to stop feral pigs we have got to put a bit more effort in. In places where there are a lot of pigs we could make hunting expeditions, not just on foot, but take helicopters out and actually shoot pigs from the helicopters. Imagine if there were lots of pigs and you could see them all from the air how many pigs you could shoot. In the not so populated places we could place pig traps. I think those options would work if we stuck at it for a good period of time then I think we could stop the deleterious effects of feral pigs. If none of that works, I don’t really want to do this, but there is one more option which is poisoning, spraying 1080 over the severely affected areas, probably killing many more organisms and living beings, but sometimes this approach is needed when the forest is dying.
What Are We Currently Doing About The Feral Pig Problem At The Moment?
As far as my research has found, we as humans in the Bay of Plenty aren't really doing much to stop or lessen the effects of feral pigs at the moment. Any control effort is mostly private hunters and their dogs, and sometimes trapping and professional hunting. The Otanewainuku Kiwi Trust sometimes pays hunters when they find tracks of pigs in the Otanewainuku Forest.
There is not a lot of monitoring of pig populations happening so it is hard to know whether it is getting better or worse.
What Harm Do Feral pigs Cause in NZ And The Bay Of Plenty?
Feral pigs are destructive, harmful, dangerous and invasive species. They run around NZ totally destroying the native forests, which kills lots of native organisms.
Wild pigs harm many native NZ species pushing them close to extinction. Feral pigs kill the native New Zealand trees. Pigs dig into the ground using their nose they burrow it into the ground digging up and eating the trees roots, causing the trees to die. Then weather such as thunderstorms, tornados, cyclones rip up and destroy the underlayer of the bush, killing vital organisms that the forest needs to survive, which annihilates the entire forest ecosystem. Feral pigs also destroy farmers' crops and sometimes kill and eat baby cattle and lambs. Feral pigs can also torment the public
How Do People Deal With Feral Pigs In Other Countries
There are lots and lots of other lethal or non lethal methods other countries use to kill or protect themselves and others, for example some non lethal methods are, in the US they use guard animals to protect livestock. I guess they would have lots of savage feral pigs in the US they also must need massively big guard animals to protect the livestock. Another method they use in the US is vaccination they vaccinate animals to protect them from diseases feral pigs might carry such as leptospirosis, toxoplasmosis, brucellosis, tularemia, trichinellosis, swine influenza, salmonella, hepatitis and pathogenic E. coli, some of the diseases that affect animals and humans.
Bibliography
https://www.nrc.govt.nz/environment/weed-and-pest-control/pest-control-hub/?pwsystem=true&pwid=81
https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/things-to-do/hunting/what-to-hunt/feral-pigs/
https://www.bionet.nz/assets/Uploads/A10-Feral-Pigs-2018-04-LR.pdf
https://www.bionet.nz/assets/Uploads/A10-Feral-Pigs-2018-04-LR.pdf