The fight against Australia's 23 million feral pigs has been strengthened with the appointment of former RuralCo boss John Maher as leader of the group tasked with halting their spread and preventing African swine fever (ASF).
Mr Maher will head the National Feral Pig Action Plan and has been appointed four months after Heather Channon was named as Australia's first national feral pig coordinator.
His first task will be to head the steering group tasked with developing a national feral pig strategy.
The new chair pledged to work with diverse stakeholders to present a national strategy, framed by his experience in the commercial sector, by January 2021.
"It'll be with a clear purpose, mutually agreed accountabilities and timelines and everyone's very clear on the resources that are required," Mr Maher said.
"I'll be applying a little bit of that commercial bent into that action plan."
Mr Maher said his experience working alongside government as part of the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation (ILSC) gave him good insight into public policy frameworks as well.
"A large part of the land we'll be dealing with is under some kind of Indigenous custodianship," he said.
"It'll be important that traditional owners are brought into the discussion on this plan."
Analysing strategies and programs in place to tackle feral pigs to inform the plan's development will form Mr Maher's initial task.
"One of the first things we'll do is look at what plans there are and have a look at how effective they've been, what is best practice," he said.
"The timing on this is crucial — we now know there's African swine fever in New Guinea — only a boat trip away from Cape York."
Pork industry's role
Funding for the plan was announced in November last year when former agriculture minister Bridget McKenzie announced Australian Pork Limited would lead the development of a strategy.
$1.4 million of Federal Government money has been pledged to build the national plan.
CEO, Margo Andrae, said improving protections in the north of Australia was critical to preventing the spread of African swine fever.
A recent study of pork products confiscated at borders during September 2019 found 48 per cent contained fragments of the ASF virus.
"We really have a weak spot in northern Australia through the borders, whether that's through cultural trade or people travelling from those countries to Australia," Ms Andrae said.
"We were really shocked at how much product does come through the borders."
After $66 million was provided for strengthening border biosecurity last year, the industry experienced another reprieve as international visitation plummeted during COVD-19.
Ms Andrae said awareness of food supply chain security raised during the pandemic could help reduce the amount of imported meat.
"We'd got relaxed on our biosecurity and people weren't really understanding where their food was coming from either," she said.
"Eighty per cent of your ham and bacon on the shelf is actually imported, what we're trying to do is encourage people to support Australian product."
Success in feral fight
The managers of a Cape York Peninsula property formerly infested with feral pigs are reporting success with their management strategy.
Conservationists at Piccaninny Plains, a 165,000-hectare cattle and conservation property owned by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, declared war on the pests in 2015.
Sally Gray said 8,000 pigs have been culled on the station in the years since she and her husband arrived as managers and began an aerial shooting program.
"Cape York [Peninsula] is known as the feral pig capital of the country and we couldn't travel anywhere on the property without coming across feral pigs," she said.
Picaninny Plains contains 70 wetlands of national significance that Ms Gray said were routinely torn to pieces by feral pigs before control began.
"Those lagoons are a critical habitat for migratory wetland bird species," she said.
"It's really exciting to have a success story, people are often overwhelmed by the problem.
"It's a fairly straightforward method, the trick now is get that same effort happening at a regional level — it's great that we're starting to work towards that."
