Twenty-three people have been hospitalised with serious fire ant stings amid a surge in reports of the invasive pest in the aftermath of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred and a new $24m package targeting suppression of the insect.
The National Fire Ant Eradication Program has received notifications of 60 serious red imported fire ant (Rifa) stings in south-east Queensland since 1 March, with 23 serious enough to warrant hospital care. Separately, a puppy stung to death 15 months ago was reportedly the first pet killed in Queensland by the ants.
A program spokesperson said: “Fire ants deliver painful, fiery stings that can cause severe, and sometimes fatal, reactions in humans, pets, and animals,” citing National Allergy Centre of Excellence and Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia figures that show up to 7.5% of people stung require medical attention.
The reported rates of fire ants stings were well above average, said Reece Pianta, the advocacy manager at the Invasive Species Council. Most people stung were doing cyclone clean-up work at the time, he said.
“It just shows you what a serious risk fire ants pose to anyone who’s got a job that requires them to go outdoors, or who enjoys bush walking or barbecues on the beach,” he said.
“It tells us what the future will be like across the country if fire ant densities grow and spread everywhere.”
The impacts of growing Rifa densities on pets was also becoming clearer, Pianta said.
“We are getting a lot of reports of animals having anaphylactic reactions in parks [and] of insect sting events causing animal fatalities,” he said.
Fifteen months ago, Ebony Britton’s puppy was found dead on a fire ant nest in Greenbank, near Logan. Pianta said it was the first pet death he could definitively say was caused by fire ants.
Pianta said back-to-back flooding events, under-resourcing and inadequate support for property owners was to blame on an “explosion” in fire ant numbers. The council has warned that flood events spread the super-pest.
“I can easily think of half a dozen locations south of Brisbane where I can go and see 100 nests right now. That is something that’s changed in the last 18 months.”
He said earlier modelling showed that were fire ants to become endemic, 150,000 Australians each year would need medical attention because of fire ants stings.
On Monday, the Queensland government announced a $24m boost to Queensland’s Fire Ant Suppression taskforce, which will target 212,000 hectares (523,862 acres) within the region’s suppression zone over the next two years.
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The Crisafulli government said the treatment would reduce Rifa density in the fire ant suppression zone by up to 80%, focusing on areas along the Logan and Albert rivers and parts of the Scenic Rim, where Rifa densities were highest.
The Queensland minister for primary industries, Tony Perrett, said: “We’re hitting fire ants hard in the suppression zone, doubling down on suppression efforts to deal with this destructive pest before it impacts more Queenslanders.
“By working with other states and the commonwealth … I am very confident we will be able to prevent a fully fledged invasion.”
Pianta said the federal government now needed to match the funds.
“That’s why this funding announcement is so timely, and why it is essential that we see a federal commitment about this at the coming election. This is an issue the community is very concerned about in Queensland at the moment,” he said.
Rifa are native to South America and are believed to have arrived in Australia via infected materials on ships at the port of Brisbane in 2001 but may have been present in the country since 1992. They are dark reddish-brown with darker abdomens and pose a widespread risk to native wildlife, industry and Australia’s way of life.
The pest has now spread to more than 700,000 hectares (1.73m acres) in the Brisbane region and outlier detections have in the past year been found in Oakey, the Sunshine Coast and northern NSW.
