Recently I have been made aware of the situation with the department that is supposed to be all about the eradication of Fire Ants, a particularly aggressive ant that both stings and bites, simultaneously, and continually, repetitively.
The ants are very fast moving, and have the swarm instinct so when attacked most people and animals sustain heavy bites/stings to the affected area, and I'm talking hundreds of bites and stings, before the ants can be removed from the affected area.
What i have just been made aware of is that every new housing estate, no matter how far from any of the current fire ant areas, is instantly declared an area and added to the zone for control and monitoring, and that means inspections and a paper trail of how any materials are removed from site.
The thing is that i could make the claim that i personally am winning the battle against fire ants the same way the department is, without even bothering to kill one ant, and how is that possible? simple just keep increasing the area covered under fire ant investigation and there for the area with the ants becomes a smaller percentage, pure and simple mathematics.
That's not quite what the department is doing, because they are obviously killing off much of the fire ant population with their baits of toxic corn and are controlling the spread by monitoring the areas affected as well.
However, since they were granted power over the average citizen with the ability to fine people for non compliance with their own made up rules which almost no one knows about, they have been reluctant to relinquish that power and by increasing the areas under investigation they continue to need more staff keeping the department as one of the biggest in existence.
I'm not advocating stopping of the program to eradicate this ferocious pest, which was allowed to be imported here by a failure of the very department that now has power to fine ordinary people for far lesser failures to comply, and the department now even admits the ants may have been here longer than first thought, well DUH.
Will the ants ever be eradicated? i don't think so, all the new megalomaniac heads of department will never let that happen, in case they actually have to go get a job.
8 comments:
I have wondered if its an excuse to physically check out properties. The last time they came out to my place there were at least nine workers who walked from boundary to boundary - almost like they were measuring the land and checking for more than just fire ants.
Very interesting as all they carried were sticks?
Anon, the easiest and best method of finding Fire Ants is to walk it grid style, in close formation and keep your stick well out in front of you.
When Fire Ants are disturbed they can get up a stick in seconds and in very large numbers, dropping the stick is the best prevention from bites and stings.
I have seen Fire Ants in close proximity and they are vicious, I wouldn't want to get attacked by them.
http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/cps/rde/dpi/hs.xsl/4790_4538_ENA_HTML.htm
Why not read the public information above on the Fire Ant Program, the largest, and most expensive pest-eradication program ever attempted in Australia in order. You can discover precisely what Fire Ant staff do, how and why, and why they need and deserve our support and help, not careless disinformation.
they don't add new areas as soon as they come under development only if fire ants are found there - or within a pretty close proximity and how do you figure they let them in in the first place they don't control the ports
You ever hear of a thing called quarentine ?
It seems that there used to be a business on the ports which needed to comply with the DPI and EPA and acted under contract that cleaned all soil etc from every import, machinery, tools etc.
But somehow that was stopped, since then we have seen one of the world's worst insect pests allowed through our system for long enough to become very high in number and to have spread reasonably widely.
The DPI have taken steps to make ordinary people responsible for any and all fire ant discoveries where they can alledge it was caused by the movement of soil or a ground related material, despite their assertions that they have almost got the last fire ant.
We know trolls from the government departments read various blogs and try to minimise bad publicity, and they will stop at nothing to try to make their case.
I have it on reliable authority that fire ant staff do not inspect reported calls of possible fire ants, ( in one case the person described the ants over the phone and were told firstly they were native ants that looked like fire ants, which they actually were, in another a person in similar circumstances took a container of the ants to the fire ant control centre only to be threatened with a huge fine for transporting them when the inspectors would not come out
I'd just like to take this oportunity while on the subject of imported pests, leaving the canetoad aside, and mention the Anaconafora (might be spelled correctly or not) or the lantana bug, which was bred and released by the department as an ill concieved organic control for the problem of lantana, would have been a great idea too, if it had worked because it turns out the bug likes a lot of other plants a hell of lot better than lantana.
I'm not going to go on naming and shaming with failures from the department because there are successes as well, however when the department has "officers" out threatening people with massive fines for non compliance with rules they made up and no one really knows about I call that passing the buck and trying to make a scapegoat of an ordinary hard working Australian rather than just say, We stuffed up, we let in the fire ant, and we'd like help to locate and eradicate them.
I have live stock on my property - surely if there were fire ants present the livestock would have been bitten?
I check my animals every night as I don't like ticks attaching themselves, so I would have noticed any bites. Dispite this I have had 5 visits regarding fire ants. During the last one three workers were discussing one of my horses and asked if I would let then race her.??????
I also stand by my comments about new estates being added and that the increasing area is making the statistics look good.
Estates as far west and south as they exist are now included, Redbank Plains, the whole of springfield lakes, out to Ipswich etc. etc.
Realisticly, we did need to have the action that got rid of fire ants, thats a given; but we don't have to like the side effects that go with creating a department which is so huge and has grown so fast and promoted all its prior drones to queens, and that has now very little for all the rulers to do except be officious and throw their wieght around.
YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT THE FIRE ANTS. WE ARE HERE TO STAY BABY. WE ARE COMING FOR THE BEAUDESERT WARRIORS TONIGHT AND WE INTEND ON PLAYING WITH AN AGRESSIVE STYLE THAT BOTHS STINGS AND BITES SIMULTANEOUSLY AND CONTINUALLY, REPETITIVELY...
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