USDA/APHIS/ Wildlife Services, National Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, Texas A&M University, Kingsville, TX, USA.
Pest Manag Sci. 2018 Nov;74(11):2504-2510. doi: 10.1002/ps.4929. Epub 2018 May 16.
Invasive wild pigs damage agriculture, property, and natural ecosystems. To curtail damage, an effective and humane toxic bait containing microencapsulated sodium nitrite is under development. Strategies for delivering the toxic bait are needed to establish adequate spacing of bait sites, and for simultaneously accustoming wild pigs to the novel bait and wild pig-specific bait stations designed to exclude non-target species.
We monitored movements of 32 Global Positioning System (GPS)-collared wild pigs relative to 41 bait sites containing placebo bait. Among the bait sites, we compared three experimental baiting strategies (and a control) to evaluate which strategy led to the most wild pigs accessing the placebo bait inside bait stations. We found that bait sites should be spaced 0.5-1 km apart to maximize opportunities for all wild pigs to find and utilize the bait sites. Baiting strategies that allowed ≥ 15 days for accustoming wild pigs to bait stations were most effective and resulted in nearly 90% of wild pigs accessing the placebo bait inside the bait stations. Bait stations excluded all non-target animals, except one instance with a raccoon (Procyon lotor).
These results demonstrate the potential for toxic bait to be an effective tool for reducing populations of wild pigs with minimal risks to non-target species, if optimized delivery procedures are followed. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry.
入侵性野猪会破坏农业、财产和自然生态系统。为了减少破坏，一种含有微囊化亚硝酸钠的有效且人道的毒饵正在开发中。需要制定投放毒饵的策略，以确保毒饵投放点之间有足够的间隔，并使野猪适应新型毒饵和专门设计用于排除非目标物种的野猪专用毒饵站。
我们监测了 32 只佩戴全球定位系统（GPS）项圈的野猪相对于 41 个含有安慰剂诱饵的诱饵站的移动情况。在这些诱饵站中，我们比较了三种实验性的诱饵投放策略（和一个对照），以评估哪种策略能让最多的野猪进入诱饵站内部的安慰剂诱饵。我们发现，为了使所有野猪都有最大的机会找到并利用诱饵站，诱饵站之间的间隔应设置在 0.5-1 公里之间。允许野猪适应诱饵站的时间≥15 天的诱饵投放策略最有效，近 90%的野猪进入了诱饵站内部的安慰剂诱饵。诱饵站排除了所有非目标动物，除了一只浣熊（Procyon lotor）。
如果优化投放程序得到遵循，这些结果表明，使用毒饵可能是减少野猪数量的有效工具，同时对非目标物种的风险最小。© 2018 英国化学学会。
