What makes feral pigs a risk to biosecurity in North Queensland?

Pigs were introduced to Australia by early settlers and subsequent accidental and deliberate releases resulted in the wild (feral) population being established throughout Australia.

About 60 per cent of feral pigs are found in northern Queensland. North Queensland is only a small distance from the Torres Strait Islands, which in turn are just a stepping stone away from our nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea.

This means North Queensland acts as an important potential conduit for diseases entering Australia from as far away as Asia.

Pigs in general are good amplifiers of many diseases because they tend to live in groups close together and their social behaviour means if one pig gets the disease it can rapidly spread to many other pigs and be maintained within the pig population.

Preventing diseases from spreading involves early detection so that infected animals can be isolated before they get a chance to spread the disease further.

The problem with feral pigs is they are hard to find and observe, which means we often don’t know they have a disease until lots of them are affected and then it becomes very difficult to prevent further spread.

The infected pigs then become a reservoir of disease that vectors onto mosquitoes or biting flies, which can feed on and then spread these diseases further to other animals and people.

Japanese encephalitis is an example of a disease that affects both pigs, wild birds and people where this occurs.

Some of the diseases we are very worried about getting in our feral pig population are

Foot and Mouth Disease and Rabies, which are currently not in Australia.

This is why feral pigs are regarded as a restricted invasive animal under the Biosecurity

Act 2014 and may not be moved, fed, given away, sold or released into the environment.

The Act requires everyone to take all reasonable and practical measures to minimise the biosecurity risks associated with invasive animals under their control.

This is called a general biosecurity obligation, which we all have a role to play in.