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Introducing the Bug Hunt!

Northern Queensland’s delicate ecosystems hang in the balance – their future under threat from ravenous supercolonies of yellow crazy ants. To deal with the problem, we first need to identify any locations the ants have spread to. You can help! Join the Bug Hunt and help our bug-ologists track invasive and at-risk native insects in Australia.
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Around the country, inspiring people are doing outstanding work to protect Australia’s native plants Northern Queensland’s once-vibrant symphony of chirping frogs and delicate ecosystems hang in the balance – their future under threat from ravenous supercolonies of yellow crazy ants.

‘I never hear frogs anymore, all the spiders have disappeared and I haven’t seen a snake in a long time. Big blue-tongued [lizard] fella used to live out front and he’s long gone. This place was a haven and now there’s nothing,’ said one Townsville resident earlier this year.

Although yellow crazy ants are tiny, they can swarm in great numbers, killing much larger animals like lizards, frogs, small mammals, turtle hatchlings and bird chicks. When their numbers hit super colony levels they can have a devastating impact on native wildlife and plants, upsetting entire ecosystems.

These highly invasive ants likely arrived in Australia via imports into our ports and airports. They are now established in several sites around Townsville, each threatening to create new outbreaks.

Their ability to raft downstream when it rains also poses a threat further afield.

Allowing these ants to spread could also put the state’s agricultural and tourism industries at risk while threatening the livelihoods and property values of local communities.

Yellow crazy ants tending their nest at a property in Townsville and the forests of the surrounding region.
Photos by Malcolm Tattersall & Jessica Ward-Jones.

The good news? Thanks to your support during our 2022 federal election campaign, a yellow crazy ant eradication taskforce is now being established in Townsville. The new taskforce has made eradicating yellow crazy ants from Townsville a real possibility.

But there’s a catch. Eradication only happens if you find every single ant in the region. That’s where every set of eyes becomes invaluable.

Introducing Bug Hunt

That’s why we’ve created Bug Hunt to make it easy for every Australian to identify and report potential invasive insects like yellow crazy ants.

And Townsville is where we kicked it all off!

Anyone who’s in Townsville, Cairns, the Whitsundays, or surrounding areas can help the mission to eradicate these destructive ants through Bug Hunt. By taking photos using the iNaturalist citizen science app, you can help the eradication taskforce identify any locations yellow crazy ants have spread to.

Yellow crazy ants attacking a native ground spider. Photo by Malcolm Tattersall.

How it works

The best bit about Bug Hunt is you don’t have to be an expert at identifying insects to take part. And it’s all completely free!

Just use your phone to take a photo of any insect you find and upload it to the iNaturalist app. You can also take photos within iNaturalist if you want to save some time.

Once you’ve done that, the app’s image recognition system guesses what species you’ve seen and records a location for the observation. Then a community of experts confirms the identity of the insect for you. If it’s a concerning invasive species like a yellow crazy ant, the app will automatically alert the appropriate authorities.

If everyone in the Townsville region adds their photos of suspected yellow crazy ants, there’s a much, much greater chance all of their colonies can be found and eradicated.

Along the way, you can also take photos of other bugs you find, get them identified and learn more about the under-loved native insects in your area!

Yellow crazy ants attacking a native ground spider. Photo by Malcolm Tattersall.

Join the Bug Hunt

If you don’t map weeds, you can’t manage weeds. That’s the simple principle that’s generated file upon

While Townsville was our testing ground, the Bug Hunt project is now available for you to join from anywhere in Australia.

Download iNaturalist on your phone or tablet, join the Bug Hunt project, then start taking photos of any insects you suspect might be invasive or just want to know more about.

They could be in your house or garden, at work or school, on a walk, at the playing field, in a national park, at the beach or anywhere else you notice a curious little critter. Pull out your phone, add a photo of it into iNaturalist, then let the AI and experts tell you what you’ve found.

Our full guide on how to join Bug Hunt and use iNaturalist.

In particular, we want you to add photos of any bees, ants and snails you come across. These three types of ‘bugs’ tend to fly, crawl and glide under the radar. That can be a bit of a problem because there are a lot of potential invasive bees, ants and snails that could pop up in your neighbourhood at any time without anyone noticing.

Taking part in Bug Hunt is an opportunity to learn about native bugs while also playing a vital role in protecting your community from invasive insects. So get hunting!

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Your support to protect critically endangered and vulnerable species from extinction is vital. Together, we can ensure governments prioritise action on invasive species and protect our wildlife and iconic places.

The Invasive Species Council was formed in 2002 to seek stronger laws, policies and programs to protect nature from harmful pests, weeds and diseases.

The Invasive Species Council acknowledges the Traditional Custodians throughout Australia and their connections to land and sea. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

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Your gift is a lifeline for nature.

Our protected areas are being trashed, trampled, choked and polluted by an onslaught of invaders. Invasive species are already the overwhelming driver of our animal extinction rate, and are expected to cause 75 of the next 100 extinctions.

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A silent crisis is unfolding across Australia. Every year, billions of native animals are hunted and killed by cats and foxes. Fire ants continue to spread and threaten human health. And the deadly strain of bird flu looms on the horizon. Your donation today will be used to put the invasive species threat in the media, make invasive species a government priority, ensure governments take rapid action to protect nature and our remarkable native wildlife from invasives-led extinction, death and destruction.

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    Dear Project Team,

    [YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.] 

    I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.

    The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.

    The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.

    This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.

    Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.

    Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.

    Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.

    I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.

    Kind regards,
    [Your name]
    [Your email address]
    [Your postcode]


    Dear Project Team,

    [YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.] 

    I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.

    The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.

    The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.

    This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.

    Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.

    Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.

    Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.

    I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.

    Kind regards,
    [Your name]
    [Your email address]
    [Your postcode]