A freshly appointed NSW pig tsar will be tasked with cutting numbers of the porcine pests in three hotspots being ravaged by the feral animals.
The state's first "feral pig co-oordinator" will oversee a $13 million control program to tackle an explosion in feral pig numbers, which farmers say are at crisis levels.
The program, announced earlier in 2023, will focus on cutting rising numbers of pigs in the Riverina, as well as northwest and western NSW.
Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty said the program was modelled on successful pig-control programs and was targeting areas with high-density populations of the animals in order to have the greatest impact.
The 2023-24 control program will be delivered by state agency Local Land Services, which will ramp up aerial shooting and ground control activities in the chosen areas.
It will also deliver training to landholders to control the feral animals on their properties, as well as subsidising the cost of treating grain to bait feral pigs.
Feral pig coordinator Bec Gray said she had seen the damage feral pigs caused to agricultural production and the environment.
"The more landholders taking part in control programs, the more successful they will be at reducing feral pig numbers," she said.
Over the next eight months, she will drive the program to cull at least 87,000 feral pigs across NSW.
More than 97,000 feral pigs have been culled across the state over the past year but farmers estimate there are millions more.
Mr Minns previously said numbers were on the rise and they were causing millions of dollars of damage in lost agricultural production and environmental degradation.
A 2020 estimate put the number of feral pigs across Australia at 3.2 million, but the real figure is believed to be much higher.
