By CAITLIN CROWLEY
RESIDENTS are being recruited to the fight against fire ants on the Darling Downs, with a new “communication and engagement” campaign launched this week urging people to check their properties for signs of the invasive species.
But farming lobby group Agforce fears the messaging misses the mark and fails to accurately identify what fire ants look like and how big of a threat they pose to regional economies and communities.
The awareness campaign is the National Fire Ant Eradication Program’s latest response to the discovery of two fire ant nests at Kleinton, 17kms north west of Toowoomba, in June this year.
Agforce has raised serious concerns about the “agility and decisiveness” of the eradication program, and it wants simplified guidelines to make it easier for people to spot fire ants and have those reports taken seriously.
“At the moment it is very difficult for a lay person to explain those identifiers,” Agforce Biosecurity Policy Committee Chair Belinda Callanan told the Caller.
“We’re extremely concerned with what lies ahead – obviously we need to stop them (fire ants) in their tracks.
“With the looming El Nino predictions, we’re vitally concerned about movements of fodder out of those hay growing and seed producing areas of the south east.
“Compliance of those areas and awareness generally amongst the ag community needs to be stepped up.
“Agforce has got a role to play in that, but so does the department.”
Callanan said campaign material (pictured below) didn’t demonstrate what a fire ant really looked like, and that the tone of the wording should be much stronger.
“I think they need to have a reality check and go out into the regions – they need to get boots on the ground and actually see how this stuff (fire ant nests) looks on the ground,” she said.
“Perhaps they need to do some surveys where they see what peoples’ reactions are to some of this stuff to see if it’s hitting the mark, because I don’t think it is.
“I think people’s awareness of it is increasing, however I believe it’s probably got a long way to go.”
Callanan said Agforce was pushing for a “citizen science contribution” to be included in the Eradication Program and that while people’s awareness of the threat was increasing, it has a long way to go.
“There’s a lot of experts outside of the national fire ant program, that are private businesses, that could definitely assist in this program that haven’t even been thought about,” Callanan said.
Callanan said the involvement of private testing facilities could help reduce the significant wait time between when a suspect nest is reported and confirmed, after revelations it was several weeks before the nests at Kleinton were investigated and destroyed.
The Caller asked the National Fire Ant Eradication Program how long it took to confirm the suspect nest was fire ants, but a specific time period wasn’t disclosed.
A spokesperson did confirm a sample kit was sent to the person who made the Kleinton report after photographic evidence was unable to be provided.
“The sample kit was returned to our program for testing three weeks later and allocated for routine testing,” the spokesperson said.
“Upon determining the sample was fire ants, a treatment team visited the property within 1 day, and the nest was destroyed.”
The Caller understands suspect cases accompanied by photographic evidence are treated with priority and testing is done within two days, while the response time for routine cases without photos is 2-3 weeks.
“That figure of how long it took should be disclosed to the people of Toowoomba in an open and transparent way,” Toowoomba North MP Trevor Watts said.
“I think that’s a legitimate question that should be answered by the department. If it’s a couple of months, well that’s of great concern.”
Watts said he was told by the Eradication Program that he’d receive weekly updates on the outbreak in his electorate, but they only lasted a couple weeks.
“I was also told that there would be some DNA testing done and they would be able to identify where these nests came from,” he said.
“What I want to know and what the people that I speak to want to know, is how did this (nest) get transported to Toowoomba, on what piece of equipment, under what set of circumstances, from specifically what region into our region.
“The DNA should be able to tell us that and if it has, that information hasn’t been shared.”
Earlier this month government documents obtained by the Invasive Species Council detailed a $49 million shortfall in fire ant funding for 2023/24, cutting eradication and surveillance efforts in Queensland by half (as pictured above).
“The window to stop dangerous fire ants taking over Australia is rapidly closing, but instead of the urgent funding boost needed, we have more dithering and delay from the federal government,” Invasive Species Council spokesperson Reece Pianta said.
“Queensland and NSW have shown leadership by committing to the full level of funding needed. Inexplicably, the federal, Victorian and WA governments are still dragging the chain.
“There will be no systematic eradication and only limited surveillance work being undertaken on the western or northern boundaries of the outbreak this year, risking spread into the Murray Darling Basin and North Queensland.
“It’s in the interests of every state in Australia to urgently fund the eradication efforts in Queensland. NSW is at extreme risk of being invaded, with the latest outbreak close enough for a single queen ant’s flight to spark a fire ant infestation across the border.”
Agforce is equally concerned a lack of funding could limit the implementation of the “horseshoe” approach to containing fire ants in the south east, it’s been pushing for for years.
“Ideally we don’t want to see the eradication zone expanded into agricultural land further west of the Lockyer,” Belinda Callanan said.
“We want to see it stabilised and reduced not increased. Here’s hoping some of that funding shortfall gets sorted in due course.”