FOR pig hunters across the country, the environmental, economic and social implications of the wild pests are common knowledge.
Wild pigs are notorious for damaging pastures, land and crops from sowing to harvest, degrading waterholes and wetlands, preying on native species, and spreading disease, parasites and invasive plants.
In 2021, the Queensland government estimated that the state had up to 2.3m feral pigs, and stated that they were "among Queensland's most widespread and damaging pest animals".
Now a new initiative is helping to not only tackle the growing pig problem, but also bring a scientific look into the way the pigs live, breed, and populate.
National president of the Australian Pig Doggers and Hunters Association Ned Makim was behind the 10,000 Ears Project which launched on March 1.
"The APDHA (constituted in Queensland 20 years ago) exists to represent what we call legal, ethical hunters and one of the tasks that we have is within a changing world and a more urbanised Australia, to explain the relevance of pig hunting," he said.
"This year, leading up to APDHA's 20th anniversary, we thought 'we're on every committee, every pest management group, we liaise with government and with cops about illegal hunting'.
"I spoke at the Feral Pig Conference in Cairns last year on the position of hunters as citizen scientists. I said 'it's a great resource that no-one's using. There is more to us than killing a lot of pigs...we can gather data, you can pick our brains...collectively we have hundreds and hundreds of years of pig behaviour and biology sitting in hunters' minds'."
Spurred on by a positive reception from the academic community, Mr Makim began the Great Australian Pig Hunt on January 1, encouraging hunters to log their monthly kills to infer a national figure.
"On two months, the inference is that recreational hunters have killed 1.74m pigs throughout Australia...the average rate was 19.8 (pigs per hunter) in January, and 19.56 in February," he said.
The statistics were coming in thick and fast, and buoyed by the strong participation rate, Mr Makim quickly saw room for more growth within the academic world for further studies.
"We spoke to Associate Professor Ben Allen at the University of Southern Queensland. He's a wildlife researcher...he said 'can you get 1000 ear tips?' I said 'I can get 10,000'...and he said 'if you can do that, it could be the biggest wildlife study in Australia'," Mr Makim said.
Thus, the 10,000 Ear Project began, kicking off with significant uptake by the pig hunting community.
"They cut off the tip of the ear...put it in a brown paper bag to dry out. Once they're dry, they're no longer a bio-security issue in terms of transport or being hazardous," Mr Makim said.
The hunters must snip off a tip of the ear, place it in a brown paper bag, and write on the bag the date the pig was killed, its sex, whether it was breeding age, and the nearest town.
There are up to 30 hunters collecting ear samples from each pig they catch.
The samples are delivered to a central location for longer-term storage, awaiting a partnership between APDHA and an organisation with "the requisite expertise or finance, or both, to have the samples analysed".
A report collated by Mr Makim stated that the participation rate of 56 hunters consistently collecting 18 pig ear samples a month for 10 months could achieve 10,000 samples.
The DNA samples could provide a "bank of information which can be accessed for research", assist in obtaining grants to "administer the program longer term and facilitate a major analytical exercise" to potentially rank as one of country's largest pest animal studies, elevate pig hunters from "incidental suppliers of data to active field staff of a major research project", and establish the APDHA as a "genuine research driver in the feral pig space".
Through communications with Mr Allen, Mr Makim discovered that the ear tips can reveal information about pig breeding, why one boar becomes dominant, information for the potential of a disease outbreak, as well as the "biggest and best thing" - the revelation of the shape of a breeding cohort of pigs.
"Pigs don't just live in a spot and graduate out in a circle...they follow land forms....they follow gullies, ridges and water courses. The best control methods would be following the area where all those pigs are related," he said.
"It would be significant if you have African swine fever...which could pop up in a place like Charters Towers, for example. The initial instinct for controllers...is to throw a circle around Charters Towers...to manage and contain the disease. But that has never worked when dealing with a wild population.
"They won't adhere to circular movement, they'll go where the breeding pattern goes...if they're all related in some way in varying degrees, they'll go further along the Burdekin. Then that's the shape the control method should take.
"That's one of the things that could pop up (from this study). It could make things more effective. Pigs tend to live up in the hills and come down to feed...hunters know what, but if we can show that through DNA, it will codify the knowledge already held by pig hunters and provide information...for disease outbreak."
Hunters from across the country have come on board to help with the project, ranging from Weipa to the Gulf and up into the Northern Territory.
After widespread heavy rainfall across the state this year, Mr Makim said he had seen a "massive increase" in pig numbers.
"As there is every time there's a season like this," he said.
"They can breed three times a year. My experience in temperate Australia is that the main breeding times are...when sows coming into season in the first week of May. You can see it...or notice that the really big boars that you never see...they appear in the middle of the day.
"The second season is the first week of September...and in a really good season, the first of January. A sow may have 10 babies and rear eight, and half of those are going to be sows. In a good season, the governing factor is weight not age, so if they're 30kg, they'll come into season quickly...in as little as three months...and she'll breed again...plus her first lot of females are all having babies...that causes an exponential rise because they breed like rabbits.
"It's an absolute time bomb. Yay for hunters, because they're putting the pressure on them but you're never going to get rid of pigs in Australia."
Mr Makim said there are currently studies that are looking at breeding out mosquitoes by engineering their DNA to only produce males.
"If you want to do the same with pigs, it would take 200 years to breed only male pigs in Australia. But in 200 years, nature has a way of finding a way," he said.
"We have to find things that will work now. At risk is the export meat industry, food production, and the immediate threats to that."
