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Field notebook · Caboolture and the Moreton Bay acreage

Fire ants, stings and ticks: pest control on Caboolture acreage

Fire ants are small, coppery brown ants that can inflict painful stings on people and animals, and in Queensland they are a category 1 restricted pest under the Biosecurity Act 2014. This notebook is for the paddocks, sheds and mulch heaps around Caboolture: how to tell fire ants, how to report them, what their stings do, and two allergies that can follow people outdoors, to stings and to ticks.

A field guide published by Dotto from Queensland and Australian government pages and from the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA), listed at the foot of each page.

A drawn plan of a small acreage block, with survey flags A fenced block seen from above. Near the road are a house, a shed with a woodpile and a paved path. Behind them is open pasture with a row of round hay bales and a pile of logs. Orange survey flags mark the open pasture, the roadside verge, the paved path and the log pile, the places Business Queensland names as usual for fire ants. Small open squares mark the hay bales, a potted plant and a load of garden soil, which Queensland's regulation lists as fire ant carriers. ROAD HOUSE SHED HAY BALES LOGS PASTURE POT SOIL N
Drawing, not to scale. Flags: places Business Queensland names as usual for fire ants. Squares: things Queensland’s regulation lists as fire ant carriers.

Where to look on a block

Business Queensland says fire ants are usually found in open areas such as lawns, pastures, roadsides and unused cropland, and that they can also be found next to or under timber, logs, rocks, pavers or bricks. A mound can be up to 40 cm high, or flat and looking like a small patch of disturbed soil, with no obvious entry or exit holes.

Plenty on an acreage can carry them. Among the fire ant carriers listed in Queensland’s Biosecurity Regulation 2016 are baled hay or straw, products of mining or quarrying, potted plants, soil, and anything with soil attached. The ants travel on their own too: the Australian Government’s outbreak page says they can fly up to 5 km and move over and under the ground.

Kept at the front of the notebook

The pages in this notebook

  1. No. 01 · IdentificationHow to spot fire ants

    Size, colour, the mound, the colony’s year, and how far they travel.

    From: Business Queensland; Outbreak

  2. No. 02 · The lawReporting fire ants in Queensland

    The 24-hour duty, how to report, and the zone rules for hay, soil and manure.

    From: Biosecurity Act 2014; Biosecurity Regulation 2016

  3. No. 03 · First aidFire ant stings

    Queensland Health’s first aid set out whole, and what a sting does over ten days.

    From: Queensland Health; HealthyWA; ASCIA

  4. No. 04 · AllergyAnaphylaxis action plans

    What ASCIA’s plans are, who signs one, and how long it lasts.

    From: ASCIA; healthdirect

  5. No. 05 · AllergyTick allergy

    Why a disturbed tick matters, the meat allergy link, and keeping ticks off.

    From: ASCIA; healthdirect; NSW Health

Twenty-five years of fire ants in Queensland

Fire ants were first detected in the Brisbane area in February 2001. Since then they have spread across South East Queensland, with nests found over an area of an estimated 600,000 hectares. They have also been eradicated from Australia on eight occasions, six of them in Queensland.

Business Queensland puts it plainly: “Early detection and reporting are the key elements in eradicating fire ants.” Fire ant biosecurity zones are in place in parts of Queensland to restrict the movement of materials that could spread them, and the regulation sets out two, zone 1 and zone 2, drawn on a fire ant biosecurity zone map. If a block sits inside a zone, those rules reach the hay paddock, the manure heap and soil on the move.