I hope you have better luck with that than with emus.
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Interesting. Contrary to the information provided on the “landline” show, the experience in Texas seems to be the bait also kills birds and raccoons , and it remains unclear to me if the dead animals are a danger to scavengers. They seem to have developed countermeasures for these problems (including a bear captcha of some kind ). Another issue with feral pigs might be an impact on the carbon sequestration ability of the grasslands they destroy. I hope something can be done about this. Here is an article from “The Atlantic” about the experience with Hoggone in the USA, if you’re interested:
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My understanding (I am not a biochemist) is that the nitrite salts kill just about everything, which is why so much effort went into the delivery system: big enough that other animals can’t open it, but not so big that wild hogs can’t, and something that they won’t learn to avoid. So part of the protocol is to set unpoisoned bait to get the hogs used to it, and then poison it when there are enough eating from the box.
The poison was already known. It was developing the feed to be poisoned, and the delivery system that took most of the research.
It is made somewhat easier in Australia because there aren’t any other animals which are likely to get into those boxes. We don’t have bears to protect.
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Good article. The AI-enabled bait boxes are an interesting innovation.
We have no bears in Australia. (Koalas are not bears - and in any case they are mainly arboreal and live on gumleafs). Finding a perfect solution is problematic. I’m thinking that bait and bait station design can be evolved to minimize bykill. Over Christmas lunch I was talking to a local lady who is the goto person for animal welfare in this tiny town. She mentioned that there were two separate local incidents of dogs almost dying (only saved by a two hour drive to the nearest vet). The only commonality is that they had both consumed sausages. We guessed it was the nitrites - though I suggested they may have been allergic to sawdust.
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This is my favorite telling of the Emu Wars.
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You have to castrate them, and then feed them for a few weeks until the hormones clear their system. Otherwise, the meat smells distinctly like urine while it’s being cooked. The taste is kind of okay, but the smell while cooking will put you out of the house for the rest of the week.
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Thanks for the explanation!
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