A Texan entomologist visiting Australia to help with the fire ant outbreak has a warning about the human toll of the invasive insect.
No one wants to experience the gut-wrenching wait to find out how their child will react the first time they are bitten by a potentially deadly fire ant.
“You can imagine how agonising that is for a parent, plus you have the concern of wondering whether your child is overly sensitive to their stings.” In most cases, fire ant bites cause a burning sensation lasting for about an hour, which can create blisters and pustules.The Queensland outbreak is already forcing closures of sports fields and beaches where colonies have cropped up, but Puckett said it could get worse.
Fire ants entered the US from South America in the 1930s, and eradication efforts failed. They have colonised about 20 per cent of the US. Fire ants first arrived in Australia at Brisbane in 2001 via international shipping. Since then, colonies have been found and eradicated in Sydney, Gladstone and Fremantle. Ants were found in transported agricultural material last year in Northern NSW, Hobart and Melbourne.Fire ants can be collected when harvesting mulch for gardens and feed for livestock. The ants found last year in northern NSW were probably transported in landscape materials.
The ring around Brisbane will be closed over time in a pincer movement, using the coastline as a border, to hopefully eradicate the ants by the early 2030s. Meanwhile, suburbs in the middle of the ring are the “suppression zone”, where residents are expected to control nests until the eradication teams arrive.
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