Feral swine is an issue not only here in the Southeast, but across other parts of the country too. And it has been five years since the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched their Feral Swine Eradication and Control Pilot Program (FSCP). It is designed to help agricultural producers and private landowners combat the costly impacts of feral swine.
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) partnered with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services’ (APHIS) Wildlife Services. Through 34 pilot projects across 12 states highly impacted by feral hogs, the program worked to control the threat of feral swine to agricultural landscapes and natural ecosystems.
And according to a NRCS article, with it now being in its final year, the program has delivered on its goals of managing feral swine to reduce the damage caused to agriculture, property, natural resources, and human health, which is detailed in its newly released report.
The FSCP has helped producers and landowners not only here in in Alabama, Florida and Georgia, but also in Arkansas, Hawaii, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.
Since last October, the program had successfully assisted over 4,300 landowners on almost 3 million acres. In addition, training and outreach events were held to educate landowners on feral swine issues and trapping techniques and reached more than 100,000 people across all pilot project areas.
Working with 14 grant partners, NRCS provided financial assistance to producers for on-farm trapping and technology related to capturing and removing feral swine and restoring damaged lands. In addition, NRCS partner organizations provided other services, including pre- and post-project damage assessments and other means to assess control efforts.
Project delivery and conservation activities varied by state and local needs. For example, in Georgia, project delivery was based on watersheds and allowed the partners to monitor feral swine effects on water quality. Although preliminary results have shown improved water quality within the project area, additional monitoring will provide conclusive results soon. South Carolina project areas saw reduced average agricultural and environmental damage on participating properties.
APHIS worked through the program to continue direct control activities using well-established feral swine management methods and advanced innovative approaches to reduce feral hog populations, working with landowners to suppress and eliminate feral swine in project areas where agricultural and other natural resources were severely damaged.
Using innovative technologies such as unmanned aerial systems, remotely managed traps using telemetry, and science-based camera monitoring techniques, feral swine were eliminated in several areas and dramatically reduced in others. Due to this success, some landowners and resource managers who were previously skeptical about successfully managing feral swine damage, have changed their minds and now advocate for continued control efforts.
The Feral Swine Eradication and Control Pilot Program (FSCP) was authorized by the 2018 Farm Bill and provided $75 million to be split evenly between NRCS and APHIS-WS, to reduce severe damage of feral swine, over a five-year span (2019-2023).