Miss Piggy and her feral friends need a price on their heads

Bring back the bounty! No, not the two-piece chocolate covered coconut treat. Unlike the poor old Fantale, that Bounty is still with us. We need to establish a bounty on porky pig and his fellow porcine perpetrators who are running amok in vast numbers across rural NSW. Farmers are up to their rusty old windmills in feral pigs and there’s simply not enough professional shooters to take down their numbers fast enough.

We need a bounty system in NSW that pays recreational licensed hunters for every feral pig they knock over as compensation for the time and cost it takes to journey into the Australian wilderness to hunt these razorbacked devils.

This week, NSW Farmers called for more resources to combat the explosion in feral pig numbers which it says is at crisis levels. NSW Farmers has blamed years of high rainfall and the resulting greening of the bush for feral pig breeding numbers hitting the “millions”. This has led to millions of dollars in damage being done to crops, livestock, properties, public land and national parks.

Having recently returned from a trip to the NSW bush, I can attest to the explosion in the feral pig population. Driving into the property on which we hunt, we would normally see a couple of wallabies and a wombat holding a quiet tea party. Entering the property during the latest trip we saw more than 25 wild pigs raving it up in the rye grass causing damage to the surrounding bushland.

Pigs don’t care who owns the land they’re tearing up, but the results are devastating. An average mob of 20 pigs rooting for tubers and grubs can destroy a football-field-sized tract of land in less than 24 hours.

Contrary to popular belief, pigs are not dainty herbivores feeding on flowers and long grass. They gorge themselves on anything they can catch and kill. Pigs will attack all manner of native animals and livestock, including possums and bandicoots along with lambs and newborn calves. Big razorback boars are such foul cannibals, sows often have to chase away the males so they don’t snack on the piglets they only recently sired.

Feral pigs are also one of the prime targets for recreational hunters. Over the years, weekend hunters have taught themselves the tricks of the trade to take down perilous porkies – stalk them, spotlight them, track them with hunting dogs and the increasing trend of using side-by-side buggies to get up close and personal with the stinky fiends.

However, all this takes time, fuel and a fistful of dollars. The larger calibres used to take down feral pigs can cost between $3 and $5 a bullet, and with petrol prices remaining stubbornly high, a simple weekend out to a rural property can cost a bomb. This is where government programs like a feral pig bounty could incentivise licensed hunters to head out bush to a private property or a state forest and cull vermin.