Tough Love

Working in conservation is not all about cuddling koalas and playing with kangaroos. Sometimes to get the job done, you have to get a little nasty; you have to be a little heartless and unkind.

Pigs are one of the worst animal pests we have on the reserve (competing with cane toads for the title). They eat anything and everything; they stomp about in the mud, digging through plants with their snorts and grunts, trying to find frogs, grubs, crustaceans and anything else edible or close to edible. Their fat little hooves rip up the ground everywhere they go and they travel in herds of 10 or 20, leaving havoc and mayhem in their wake.

Pigs are recent occupants, like us white fellas. The first ones snuck ashore with Captain Cook when he crashed his ride up near Cairns around 1770 (although there's now some speculation that earlier Asian visitors might have brought some through first). And just like us white fellas they've thrived here, out-competing just about everything and throwing out the balance that keeps the whole engine ticking over. The Aussie landscape has no effective defense mechanism against this invader.

Shooting doesn't really work; it's more of a last resort. Pigs might be ugly but they’re not dumb. Fire a shot into a herd and you'll most likely take one out, but before the smoke’s cleared the rest will have scattered into the bush. Next time those pigs hear you coming, they'll start to move a little earlier and you might not get so lucky with your first shot.

By the time you've taken out a few, those pigs will know that the sound of an approaching 4x4 is not the happy jingle of an ice cream van come to delight the kids. They'll be gone before you come over that last gulley. In the end you're left with a herd of super pigs, as skilled in the art of subterfuge and camouflage as a team of crack SAS troops. It is simple Darwin evolution in a species that has proven be particularly good at that game.

Dogs can be used to fine tune this process but dogs aren't real particular when it comes to hunting. To be fair, it's probably more the case that the type of hunters that you get out bush, that use dogs and think a Sunday night pig shooting is a good way to spend time, are the ones who are not too particular rather than their dogs. We're not overly keen on wiping out the local population of super rare Buff-breasted Button-quail just to get rid of a few pigs.

So this leaves the traps. These are large fenced off areas where the trapper throws old scraps. He leaves these traps open for a while to let the pigs get used to them and then when they are coming and going, he rigs the door to drop shut. Since the pigs travel around in herds the traps should close on a big group at a time and these can all be 'disposed of' in one hit.

Our traps have had a little success but the reserve is still overrun by pigs. We see them often, sometimes the little bastards are arrogant enough to go rummaging just outside the visitor centre at night.

It was late last night when I was driving through the reserve to get to my campsite. I rounded a corner and there in my headlights were three piglets, trotting down the path. In that moment I was judge, jury and executioner. The verdict was passed and the accused was found guilty of crimes against the balance of nature.

I put my foot to the floor; the Jackaroo roared forward. Two piglets scattered but the third was caught in my path. It was a quick end, no worries about that. Had I been in a smaller car I would have had doubts about a clean kill and would have pulled back. When my Jackaroo hits something however, there's little left behind.

So there it is; the confession of a cold-blooded, remorseless murderer. Though it may tarnish the misguided perception some may have of me as a tree-hugging animal-lover, this is the real world. We are earth's gardeners; to make the garden grow you have to kill the weeds.

And I've no doubt, that should we not manage to restore the balance we've damaged by our own undertakings, then just as it did with the piglet, nature will send bigger gardeners to deal with the little weeds called humans too.