A WHOPPING haul of feral pigs were culled in a western Riverina aerial shooting program in November last year, aided by the use of thermal imaging technology to track the damaging porkers.
An infra-red thermal imaging technology was mounted to a helicopter for an aerial survey over more than 180,000 hectares in south west NSW. The survey was completed by Western, Riverina and Murray Local Land Services late last year.
Project coordinator Michael Leane, of Riverina LLS, said the new eye in the sky enabled the survey to sweep previously inaccessible country in the lignum country and sodden floodplains of the Lowbidgee, which painted a clearer picture of the pest numbers in the survey area.
“By using the helicopter and thermal imaging, we also gained access to areas that we simply couldn’t reach from the ground and we now have baseline data to track progress in our feral animal control programs over the next two years.”
Mr Leane said the accurate survey allowed shooters to hone in with deadly accuracy and deliver an impressive cull. A two week aerial shooting program destroyed 4,416 feral pigs, with shooting team in two helicopters.
The survey area was sampled from a 1.3 million hectares project area in LLS regions and funded by the federal government’s Pest and Weed Drought program
“We filmed 900 kilometres of flight path over 180,000 hectares within the project area and the results were incredibly accurate, compared with other monitoring techniques,” he said.
“We wow have solid baseline figures for pig numbers, which we didn’t have before and this has allowed us to target more accurately areas of higher density (in pigs).”
Mr Leane said the new baseline data would be of use to private landholders, who could use the survey to quantify the overall effectiveness of a cull on their property.
“Next time we can say to a farmer we shot a certain percentage of the pigs on their property, rather than just a raw number,” he said.
Tupra Pastoral Company, located between Mildura and Griffith, was one of the private holdings involved in the program.
Tupra manager David Rankin provided accommodation for the control program team at the shearing quarters on the property.
“Our company likes to be involved in the aerial shooting program… In a matter of hours, hundreds of pigs can be destroyed, then we use varied ways to control the balance, including hunting, trapping and baiting, to achieve the best result.
The program combined National Parks and Wildlife Service and NSW Primary Industries Office of Water, as well as private landholders who volunteered to take part, as part of the Nimmie-Caira water-saving project in the Murrumbidgee region.
Mr Leane said LLS was keen to investigate new uses and locations for the fledgling thermal imaging surveys. LLS plans to re-survey the area in two years to measure the impact of its ongoing control programs.
