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Where has all our wildlife gone?

We’ve joined Townsville City Council in the battle against yellow crazy ants in Queensland’s far north. Our new community coordinator Yvette Williams talks about what’s at risk.
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We’ve teamed up with Townsville City Council to help local communities eradicate yellow crazy ants. Our new community coordinator Yvette Williams meets the locals and comes to grips with the task ahead.

On a warm Saturday afternoon in Townsville, a small group of concerned citizens sit around a table overlooking the lake at Billabong Sanctuary discussing the impacts of yellow crazy ants on the surrounding area.

Dave tells me the bush on his property is eerily quiet these days. The wildlife has gone, even the green ants, and the only thing that seems to thrive are the daddy long leg spiders. Local bird breeders are reporting chicks being killed in their nests by yellow crazy ants, which spray formic acid into the chick’s eyes, leaving them defenceless to attack.

Yellow crazy ants are a recent arrival in Queensland. They were first detected in Cairns in 2001 and are thought to have arrived in sea cargo containing soil or mud.

They are a fearsome creature, and listed among the 100 worst invasive species in the world. They have a huge impact on our native wildlife, killing and consuming most other ants, insects, lizards, birds and small mammals. They thrive in Queensland’s warm, humid tropics.

Fight back

Yellow crazy ants have been present in Nome, just south of Townsville, since 2008. The ants had not only infested local bushland but were invading people’s homes. Nome lies close to the Mt Elliot section of Bowling Green Bay National Park, which is home to many threatened species, including northern quolls, the black-throated finch and Mount Elliot mulch-skink.

Over the past six months Townsville City Council has baited and surveyed crazy ants in the Nome area and the numbers are dropping, but the work has only just begun. Over the next two years the project will need more people on the ground carrying out follow-up baiting, surveying and monitoring if we are to successfully eradicate yellow crazy ants from the area.

Community action

The size of the Nome infestation and the number of small properties that exist within the suburb means baiting and surveying must be done on foot. Local council worker, Norm Lees, is leading the eradication effort and knows what’s needed to succeed.

“We cannot accidently miss or leave one area untreated or it will need to start all over again,” he tells me.

Over the next year my key task is to establish a Townsville Yellow Crazy Ant Community Taskforce and recruit volunteers from the local community to help survey, bait and ultimately eradiate yellow crazy ants.

It’s a daunting task, but helping local communities fight back against pest species is one close to my heart. I grew up on Norfolk Island and watched as feral rabbits stripped back vegetation to bare dirt on nearby offshore Islands.

I’ve climbed Mt Elliot in Bowling Green Bay National Park a few times now hoping to catch a glimpse of some of the wildlife that can be found nowhere else in the world, including the Mount Elliot nursery frog and the Mount Elliot leaf-tailed gecko.

Some of these species have survived here for more than 10 million years. We cannot lose them for any reason, especially invasive ants.

If Kuranda can, Nome can

This story has happened before. A 30-hectare infestation of yellow crazy ants had established near Kuranda, close to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, but with the help of Kuranda Envirocare and the Kuranda Yellow Crazy Ant Community Taskforce the infestation is now close to being eradicated.

Kuranda showed us that a community committed to eradicating yellow crazy ants can be successful. We’re adopting the same model for our Townsville efforts.

Get involved

  • The Townsville Yellow Crazy Ant Community Taskforce project is supported by the Queensland Government’s Community Sustainability Action grant program.
    If you would like to get involved or want to be kept informed of our efforts sign-up to our Townsville Taskforce email list.
  • You can also follow the taskforce on Facebook.

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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]