Biosecurity Queensland’s fire ant control centre is using remote-sensing technology to locate any remaining fire ants in the state, to better target campaigns to destroy the pest.
The South American species measures only 2-6mm in size, yet poses serious social, economic, and environmental threats. The ants were first detected in Brisbane in February, 2001.
Fire ant control centre deputy director, Craig Jennings, said that the centre started using conventional treatments, but have now stepped-up the methods.
"We had a plan at the start to do multiple treatments followed up by surveillance," Mr Jennings said, speaking to the Ipswich Advertiser. "We managed to reduce the number of ants to a very low level and that's where we are now."
As populations have been greatly reduced, the remaining nests are becoming harder to find, and have stretched the centre’s manpower resources.
"We needed to be smarter about it," he said. "We started to do some research on better surveillance techniques and the first thing we put out was the detection dogs.
"The second thing we looked at was a tool to do large-area surveillance, and that's where the remote sensing comes in."
Working with engineers from the US and a company, the fire ant control centre developed a one-of-a-kind camera system.
Flights with the camera system are being conducted in and around Ipswich now.
"The remote sensing is basically world-first technology; nobody else is doing this with the type of imagery," Mr Jennings said.
"From 150m in the air, because we're looking for a mound 10cm in diameter, the imagery we're taking is 2.5cm pixels for the red, green, blue and infrared, so it's very fine imagery.
"For thermal, it's 5cm imagery and when we started this project there was no technology on the market that would let us do thermal imagery from that height with that sort of resolution."
Combined with being able to target treatment to high-risk areas, that should result in a further reduction in infestations.
Asked if the fire ants could be eradicated, Mr Jennings said: "Yes, very much so.
"With remote sensing, with one set of the cameras and a helicopter we're looking at surveying 75,000ha a year; we're looking at having two cameras, so that's 150,000ha," he said.
"It's the first time we've had a tool to quantifiably say we're in a very good position to eradicate them. With remote sensing we're looking at a three-year plan at this stage."
