FRANKFORT, Ky. — A Kentucky state wildlife biologist is attributing successful adaptive management strategies for reducing a nuisance wild pig herd.

“Over the course of the last two years, we worked with landowners in West Kentucky to implement an adaptive management strategy designed to control a specific wild pig population,” said Chad Soard, wildlife biologist, Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources (KDWFR).

Soard said one important indicator of the project’s success is the lack of wild pig damage in the management area’s row crops this season. “I spoke with many of the farmers this spring, and none are reporting wild pig crop damage like they had last year,” he said.

Adaptive management generally refers to various strategies used to control nuisance species while monitoring their populations and environmental impacts before and after control strategies are taken. The core infested area, in far western Kentucky, was between 5,000-10,000 acres, but the entire management effort covered some 40,000 acres, said Soard.

“You have to expand the area to be sure the population is brought down,” he said. The KDWFR worked with 12 farmers and other area stakeholders to focus on effective wild pig control.

Participating farmers agreed to prohibit wild pig hunting on their land, and participating landowners purchased wild swine traps through a KDWFR cost share program.

A KDFWR technician was employed full-time in one county to monitor the traps, removing some 100 pigs in the last year. Captured pigs were tested for brucellosis and pseudorabies, with no positive results.

As part of the management effort, USDA Wildlife Services was contracted to provide aerial removal of wild pigs in the region. In February 2011, 237 pigs were removed with aerial assistance (helicopter shoots). This February, only 77 pigs were removed with aerial assistance. Soard said this decline is also evidence of the program’s success.

Because knowledge of specific wild pig population locations leads to sport hunting requests, poaching and other nuisances for landowners, KDWFR has not released the specific location for this management effort. “It takes just one truckload of pigs dumped back into these areas by misguided individuals to undermine all the positive efforts that have occurred,” said Soard.

Wild pig populations initially spread north in the 1980s and 1990s, from long-established populations in Southern states, as demand for the animals grew among sport hunters. The pigs were, and continue to be, illegally transported and released for sport hunting. This transport, said Soard, comes at the expense of landowners, agriculture and natural resources.

“Pig hunters are the only beneficiaries of (illegal transport),” he said.

While wild pigs are omnivores and readily adapt to different habitats, they will not roam far from their farrowing. “The good thing with pigs is they are not by nature natural dispersers,” said Soard.

Once a population is contained, wild pigs are unlikely to reproduce and roam beyond their original population center. Wildlife experts say this trait points to why illegal transport is the sole reason for the presence of wild pigs in regions where they have not been historically present, such as far western Kentucky.