Wild Pigs
Strategic Planning for Managing the Unwanted Neighbor 50
TEXASRANCHSALESLLC.COM
Written by Aaron Sumrall, PhD
Pig Brig Field Engine Wildlife Research Vice President - Outreach and Research aaron@pigbrig.com
Land ownership trends over the last decade have been very dynamic, to say the least, with many new rural landowners coming from urban settings. These landowners quickly find themselves at a decision-making crossroads as they learn about land stewardship and best management plans. With any good plan, one must start with realistic goals for the property and work backward. In learning about stewardship, the damage and conservation challenges caused by non-native invasive species are evident. The most notorious nonnative invasive on the Texas landscape is the wild pig (Sus scrofa), with an expanding population and impacts ranging from hundreds of millions in crop damage to native habitat degradation. A strategic mitigation effort to remove wild pigs from your land should start with data collection. You must understand your current situation before you establish land management goals and a best management plan. Due to the nomadic tendencies of wild pigs and large family (“sounder”) ranges, game cameras are the quickest and easiest way to conquer this task. Such cameras positioned on game trails, food sources, water sources, or scent stations can collect sufficient data to devise an approach for resident wild pig management. You’ll quickly learn the number of pigs and size of sounders using your property. You might even be able to identify individuals based on coat patterns. You can also witness sounder dynamics, better understand where they travel, favorite food sources, and see any non-target species in the area. Essential data points from your game camera data are the number of pigs and sizes of the sounders. When scouting specifically for wild pig sounders, you will need to set the camera to allow the manager to determine the color of wild pigs after dark. This setting will likely require a relatively technical camera with no flash or a less expensive option requiring a flash. The color of pigs in a sounder can help you identify the number and size based on the individuals’ physical appearance (color) in the group. Managers can also determine an individual’s or group’s overall health, indicating the potential for successful management. Thin wild pigs are a good indicator of a diminishing landscape function, thus less food availability, increasing the probability of successful trapping efforts. Sounder dynamics are one often overlooked aspect of wild pig management. This oversight quickly pushes a well-meaning control plan into the meaningless category. To hold localized wild pig populations stable, managers must remove a minimum of 70% of the population annually. The only path to this math is to use an integrated pest management plan with trapping at its core. It is critical to know the dynamics and number of sounders in your area, the individual number of wild pigs in each sounder, and the number of lone boars in the area.
