Preliminary Assessment of the HogHopper™ for Excluding Non-Target Wildlife

Abstract

Feral swine populations are expanding throughout the U.S., where they are causing increasing amounts of damage to agriculture, natural resources, and property and threaten human health and safety. Methods to control feral swine damage in the U.S. consist of integrated fencing, trapping, snaring, and shooting (including hunting with dogs) efforts. New methods that are being developed to control feral swine damage include toxicants and fertility control agents. For these emerging technologies to be effective at the population-level, they must function through oral routes of delivery. Concurrent to the development of orally-delivered actives, a cost-effective system that delivers biologics to feral swine while restricting access to non-target wildlife, needs to be developed. Our objectives are to 1) describe historical efforts to develop a feral swine-specific oral delivery system in the U.S., 2) present preliminary findings from an ongoing collaborative evaluation of the Australian-made HogHopper™, and 3) outline future opportunities in developing a feral swine-specific oral delivery system. While there is a real need for a feral swine-specific oral delivery system, presently there is no universally effective system suitable for all applications and field scenarios. Each system has its advantages and disadvantages that must be assessed within its management context.