A $400 million program to eradicate fire ants may not know the true spread of the pest, a leading expert says, as Australia's agriculture ministers decide whether to give the program more money.
The national fire ant program is currently under review after admitting last year it was running short on funds and time to stamp out the costly pest.
Five years into the 10-year program, the steering committee's chair Dr Wendy Craik says it's clear the program is "unlikely" to eradicate fire ants under current funding levels.
The program has spent $231.3 million of its $411 million budget to date.
The eradication program has been plagued by understaffing and budget shortfalls, according to its annual reports and meeting minutes, and even old technology which wrongly identified cow pats as fire ant nets.
Australia's agriculture ministers are assessing an independent strategic review of the program, completed by former Inspector-General of Biosecurity Dr Helen Scott-Orr last year.
Fire ants have spread from Brisbane throughout south-east Queensland, with a western incursion boundary drawn through the Lockyer Valley – known as Australia's food bowl.
Unchecked, fire ants can destroy crops, livestock, and seriously injure or even kill humans, with an estimated $1.65 billion hit to Australia's annual economy if allowed to stay.
Without treatment, the ant incursion was forecast to spread as far south as Canberra, west to Longreach and north to Bowen.
Efforts to contain and eradicate the ant have been underway since 2001, with the latest iteration launched in 2017 as a 10-year national cost-shared plan.
'High-risk' strategy
Melbourne University bioeconomics expert Dr Danny Spring has consulted on the fire ant program for more than 15 years, conducting detailed analysis and computer modelling using the program's own data.
In 2015 and 2016 Dr Spring analysed the likely spread of the pest across south-east Queensland ahead of the 10-year program's launch.
But due to limited funding, minimal pesticide treatments were conducted in the two years between his analysis and the 10-year program officially launching in 2017, Dr Spring said.
His team recommended the program begin firstly with extensive surveillance, to ensure the very edge of the ant's spread was being targeted and the program could be confident it was pushing the pest back.
"Substantial work was done to develop models, maps of the ants, with certain degrees of confidence," he told ABC Radio Brisbane.
"The maps were never put forward as answers, as really accurate maps.
Dr Spring said it was not clear to him if that recommended surveillance work had been done before the program began direct pesticide treatments in 2017.
This meant the ants could potentially have spread well beyond those earlier projections, and the treatment program could be treating infestations well behind the boundary - allowing the ant to re-infest areas once treatment ended.
"The strategy they adopted was high-risk, in my view now, and not just with hindsight," Dr Spring said.
In 2019-20 the program's steering committee commissioned Dr Spring's team to produce fresh modelling.
Given the limited treatment in the two years between his 2015 analysis and the program's launch in 2017, that modelling concluded the edge of the fire ant incursion was no longer clear.
"I handed down a report with a finding that there's no longer reasonable confidence about where the line is," Dr Spring said.
"That implied the treatment area that they did might have been inside the line. We can't be confident it was on the edge anymore.
In a May 2021 efficiency review progress report, the steering committee confirmed Dr Spring's analysis and "concluded that available data were insufficient to enable a conclusion to be drawn regarding the geographic boundary of the spread of ants with any confidence".
In a statement, Dr Craik said a "range of techniques" were used to determine the extent of the infestation.
Lack of confidence
In 2019-20, Dr Spring's team also conducted a separate model that assessed the program's success.
Both models were handed to the program's steering committee in 2020.
Dr Spring said he has had no communication with the committee about those reports since then.
The program's meeting minutes and annual reports note understaffing and budget shortfalls, while dozens of biannual efficiency reviews have made multiple recommendations about how the program should be run.
Three years ago, the program admitted its older generation remote camera technology was occasionally incorrectly identifying cow pats as fire ant nests; in 2021, it began using a second-generation camera pack, with artificial intelligence analysing nests before sending staff on foot to investigate.
'Real risk' of missed deadline
As the lead state managing the incursion, Queensland has previously brought funding forward for program, but had no further funding available this year to top up the budgeted $30 million.
"Experience and knowledge gained over the past four years indicates that at least $60 million is required each year to achieve eradication in SEQ within the 10 years originally planned," the 2021-22 work plan states.
The agriculture ministers agreed to keep the program going while Dr Scott-Orr's review was completed, and a further $29.15 million was brought forward by other state and federal partners this financial year.
In November, Federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud criticised the Queensland government's management of the program, saying there was a "very real risk" eradication would take longer and cost more.
"The federal government puts in more than 50 per cent of the money to get rid of this pest but the Queensland government's ability to get results is worrying," Mr Littleproud said.
Queensland's Agriculture Minister Mark Furner said the program would "continue its critical work" while Dr Scott-Orr's report was assessed.
"The National Program's eradication effort in south-east Queensland is on track, but the Program Steering Committee recognises it needs more funding than originally budgeted to eradicate fire ants from Australia," Mr Furner said.
Mr Furner said the review would be published when the agriculture ministers had made decisions on the recommendations, including "any amendments to funding arrangements".
Mapping for the program's 2021-2022 work plan shows several significant detections of fire ants west of Aratula, north near Coominya, and south near Boonah, all to be treated this year.
'Totally irresponsible'
Since 2019 the program has become increasingly reliant on local councils and community members to report and treat the pests themselves.
Lowood hay producer Max Linde, whose property sits north-west of Ipswich, said locals believed additional funding would be better spent providing farmers with the necessary equipment needed to eradicate fire ants.
He said the program had failed to communicate with locals in south-east Queensland and had "pissed the whole community off".
Mr Linde said the program had not improved its engagement with the community since it began. It closed his hay farm for several months in 2021.
"It's totally irresponsible of them. It's quite pathetic, to be honest," he said.
"And then you start asking these questions and, and no one can answer anything for you."
The 64-year-old said many farmers, including his son, had discovered fire ant nests on their property and ended up doing the program's work for them.
"[My son] had to go down and mark the nests for them, so they could come back and treat [the fire ants]," Mr Linde said.
