Drastic fire ant efforts critical, says NSW Farmers

Farmers are calling for a major effort to stamp out fire ants in NSW after the insidious pests were discovered near Ballina.

According to the NSW government, the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) detected a red imported fire ant nest at Wardell, south of Ballina on Friday.

In a statement to media, the government said an incident response team from the National Fire Ant Eradication Program and NSW DPI teams were at the site to gather further information about the nest and destroy the nest with liquid insecticide, and would investigate when the ants arrived and how they got there.

NSW Minister for Agriculture Tara Moriarty announced that the fire ants site was destroyed and no longer a risk to the community living in the immediate area.

NSW Farmers president Xavier Martin said it was another significant breach of the state’s biosecurity controls and called on the government to immediately ramp up control and eradication efforts.

“This latest outbreak is a stark reminder of the failure to control and eradicate these insidious pests, the entry of red imported fire ants into NSW last year demonstrated again the urgent need for increased investment by all governments to support biosecurity,” Mr Martin said.

“NSW Farmers has called for greater focus on biosecurity for many years, but we’ve seen a failure at our borders and with the Queensland government failing to take this problem seriously, we are now facing the spread of an incredibly dangerous pest into our state.

“Red imported fire ants are a threat to agricultural production and to the landscape of NSW – they can damage agricultural equipment, sting livestock, ruin the natural environment, and pose a serious risk to the health and wellbeing of all people in NSW.”

Minister for Agriculture Tara Moriarty said teams were prepared for this discovery of fire ants south of Ballina and immediately implemented a response plan and destroyed the fire ant site.

“Red imported fire ants are an invasive pest and that is why the Minns government increased the NSW contribution to eradication from $15 million to $95 million last year,” she said.

“Biosecurity is a shared responsibility and I encourage everyone to continue to check their properties for these pests. With the summer cross-border travel in peak times I ask everyone to be careful of what they’re moving and where.”

Following the fire ant detection, NSW Nationals leader Dugald Saunders called on the state government to ramp up eradication efforts to “stop this pest from spreading any further, and to push the Prime Minister to get the remaining states to put their funding on the table”.

“Fire ants are a national problem, yet the national response plan is about $135 million underfunded, and action needs to be taken now,” he said.

“RIFA is one of the world’s worst invasive species and we cannot afford to allow this pest to establish itself here in NSW, especially because of a lack of urgency.”