As someone interested in ecology and the environment, I commenced an in-depth study of fire ants many years before fire ants appeared in Australia.
Once fire ants appeared in Australia, I formed the Australian Fire Ant Coalition and successfully lobbied the government for $200 million in funding to eradicate the ants.
It appears the majority of local people have absolutely no knowledge of the ecological effect of fire ants whatsoever.
When a local jumping ant bites a person, the sting lasts for 20 to 30 minutes. When a fire ant bites a person, it forms a blister which causes pain for about 14 days and may leave a permanent scar if infection of the blister occurs. They call them fire ants because after being bitten, it feels like someone is putting a fire against your skin.
When a native ant bites a person, it is usually a single ant that does the biting. Fire ants however, are called army ants and they travel as an army. If they get onto one’s leg, one will be simultaneously bitten by 20 to 50 ants. They don’t bite with their teeth, instead just like a bee, they have a stinger on their rear and inject poison through the stinger.
Typically, if the ants are in a coastal location, it means people may not be able to use the beach, as the ants will attack the people on the beach. If one is trying to clear lantana and fire ants are nearby, it will make it impossible to clear the lantana, or do any work in the bush at all and it would absolutely eliminate the possibility of a picnic or barbeque, in any area where fire ants were nearby, even mowing the lawn in an affected area would be very risky.
Imagine a small, rare and endangered lizard or bird is hatching out of its egg. If there is a fire ant nest 150 metres downwind, then within minutes the fire ants will smell the little creature hatching from its egg and will immediately send thousands of ants as a swarm, to follow that scent, right up the tree to the nest of the bird, or under the rock where the lizard is hatching and they will immediately kill the rare and endangered bird, lizard, or snake, before it has even completed getting out of its egg shell. This is what the fire ants have done overseas.
Given that fire ants can kill young cattle after they are born, it would seem reasonable that they will equally be able to kill newly-born koalas and kangaroos. Sadly, a human three-month-old baby was also killed at a daycare centre in America, after being swarmed by fire ants.
A person claimed they wanted to protect their green frogs. Frogs are a favourite food of fire ants and if uncontrolled they will absolutely decimate the green frog population. The effect of the fire ants on the green frogs will be a thousand times greater, than the effect on the frogs, of the chemicals used to control the fire ants, especially if the insecticide is only placed in protein pellets near the ants’ nest: no native frog is going to survive in the vicinity of a fire ant nest. However some types of deadly poisonous frogs, can co-exist with fire ants.
Fire ants can fly many miles during migration and they construct rafts so they can travel downstream on rivers.
The Australian government imported the Malaysian wasp (Ampulex compressa) to control crazy ants on Christmas Island and they could consider importation of the parasitic wasp Orasema minutissima from South America, which preys on the fire ant, Solenopsis Invicta; Invicta meaning unconquered, undefeated, invincible. Fire ants are the most aggressive ants in the world.
As for crops and orchards, the fire ants also decimate orchards. They’re also attracted to the warm and dry locations of electrical switchboards, computers and TVs – to make the nests in. Eventually they form contiguous super-colonies that can cover large areas and in such cases, human entry into the area of a super-colony would be highly inadvisable. How many ants does it take to form a colony? Just two.
It is currently illegal for a person, even a licensed pest control operator, to treat fire ants in NSW. If one stops and thinks about this and compares available options, one would see that licensed pest control operators and even volunteers, could attend a short course and be trained in proper control of fire ants and this would obviously increase the effectiveness of the efforts to eradicate the invading ants. I actually suggest that the government has made a mistake in drastically limiting the available workforce to treat the problem. One insect growth regulator is already available to the public. Personally, I feel the long-term threat posed by the fire ants is greater than the threat posed by the recent pandemic.
Let’s be realistic, for decades people have tried to stop fire ants in other countries, with no success.
Peter Olson, Goonengerry
One of the most pressing environmental issues of our region is the National Fire Ant Eradication Program. It is being disseminated by our government who are countering evidence of the very serious environmental destruction, by their own hand, and pointing the finger at the big scary fire ants as being the problem. I think that’s called projection.
They are also blatantly lying about the safety and efficacy of their program. Honestly, what have we come to after decades of environmental awareness campaigns that the government endorses a program that is killing our native species, but it’s ok because they say it is?
This is nothing short of criminal and reminiscent of the political dictatorships that we learned about in school. Poison is poison. People are sick of it and sick from it. That’s why the organic food industry, a huge part of our local economy, is so successful.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
