Baiting Wild Pigs with Poison

Photo: : A wild hog in Florida. This invasive species costs the U.S. at least $1.5 billion annually in damage and management. Credit: Steve Hillebrand / USFWS. Article by Stephen Ornes. Undark – May 12, 2021.

Wild hogs are a scourge, but designing a system targeted to kill only them is a vastly complicated undertaking.

Early one winter morning in 2020, Kurt VerCauteren discovered a cluster of dead birds in a barren field in northwest Texas. They were small birds, mostly dark-eyed juncos, but also a smattering of white-crowned sparrows.

VerCauteren’s team had poisoned them, inadvertently. The clues were clear, the death uncomplicated: The birds had flown in before dawn to scavenge deadly morsels of a contaminated peanut paste, left behind after a sounder of wild hogs had torn through the area in a feeding frenzy. The birds likely died within minutes of eating. […]

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Video: The Scare Dancer was the most effective way VerCauteren found to keep birds from eating poison meant for feral pigs. Visual: AirCrow