​Matt Bran & Brett Ottley:

​The key to feral animal control is easy!

"Make sure you find out how big the problem is before you start controlling them" says Brett Ottley from ABS Scrofa, a Northern Territory based wildlife and feral animal management business.

Speaking at today's Territory NRM conference in Darwin, Mr Ottley encouraged pastoralists and land managers to firstly conduct an aerial survey to map the animals and estimate the numbers before creating a feral animal control plan.

"You then need to work out how many animals are there, so you can efficiently work out how much time you're going to need and the cost of the control."

"If you have a feral pig problem, you need to know how many pigs you have to cull so that the animal numbers don't regenerate faster to fill the void and explode due to a lack of competition for food," he said.

​"You need to be more strategic about the effort needed to actually reduce the population level, and that might mean a target of getting rid of 70 per cent.​"
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"You need to start with that basic understanding so you have a target and you can monitor and assess the success of the control program."