They have been using it for years in Australia and New Zeland with very little impact to non target species. This isn’t something new that has never been done before.
I've seen the damage they can do but I ain't seen nothing that warrants killing them all and everything else in the area with poison. The "target" species will NEVER be the only one affected. We pave bout 200 thousand new acres a year in this state, yet worry bout what hogs are doing to the land? It's all about the $. The same people that want them poisoned would be turning them loose on there property if they could figure out have to profit from them.
Can a hog not consume enough nitrite to be poisonous to whatever eats it? You may find a way to get it only into the hog, but how you gonna keep the hog out of the coons, coyotes, fox, opossum, bear ect.. ect...?
They have been doing this in New Zeland and Australia for years, an there is a bunch of info out there regarding this. The risk to other animals and humans that eat the poisoned pig is essentially nil. In short sodium nitrite is NaSO2. Sodium Nitrate is NaSO3 which is stable, so the nitrite either wants to react with something to pull another oxygen or stabilize the molecule. Sodium nitrate essentially poisons them like Carbon Monoxide CO which does essentially the same thing. Carbon Dioxide CO2 is more stable and you breathe it in and out all the time. Once the pig dies, the “Poison” has already reacted so there is nothing to really poisonous( reactive) to pass along. Just like if you killed a cow with carbon monoxide, you could eat it and not get harmed at all.
