Environment

Is the invasive fire ant winning the war?

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[Updated 3.2.2025]

Solenopsis invicta, known as the Red imported fire ant (RIFA) has been deemed in an instructive and frightening American video as the Most successful creature that has ever lived.

They are omnivorous, they are ferocious, they have an unrivalled capacity for concerted action to promote their species, and they are here. According to the Invasive Species Council fire ants are one of the world’s worst super pests. If allowed to spread, a 2016 study found the impact of fire ants would be greater than rabbits, cane toads, foxes, camels, wild dogs and feral cats combined.

When RIFA was discovered in 2001 in the Port of Brisbane and in the western suburban fringe near Ipswich we chose eradication rather than suppression. Our response has been chequered and spasmodic with periodic reviews.

Can our rickety political structure of six states and two territories loosely joined in a commonwealth defeat this determined little critter? Whenever we have paused, fire ants have advanced. After the Senate Inquiry brought down in April, once again we are pausing rather than ramping up our effort to a full court press.

Unless we ramp up our effort before we get distracted with national elections my bet is that fire ants will cut a swathe through our wildlife, disrupt our agriculture, attack our infrastructure and threaten our outdoor way of life. More likely than not, RIFA will win. Continue reading Is the invasive fire ant winning the war? →

Sundries

Blog upgrade

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Our blog is hosted by an outfit called DreamHost, which Google tells me is located in Ashburn, Virginia, although Wikipedia has it in Los Angeles. Whatever, the important message is that we are due for an upgrade:

On March 27th, at 10PM PST, our server admins will begin restarting some Shared servers as part of regular maintenance to improve the stability and security of your Shared Hosting service. This action will cause minor disruptions to your site’s performance, including brief periods of possible downtime. This maintenance window is expected to last no more than 30 minutes.

PST turns out to be Pacific Standard Time, which is 17 hours behind Brisbane, so it should happen at 3pm on Thursday 28 March, or 4pm for those unlucky enough to live south of the Tweed. Continue reading Blog upgrade →

Environment

Australia drops the ball on fire ant invasion

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Australia’s agreed fire ant eradication program, joint-funded by all states, territories and the Commonwealth, is in jeopardy because only Queensland and new South Wales have met their funding commitments. As a result the containment and eradication work agreed under the plan has been cut by more than 50%.

On this basis, the plan fails and the fire ant wins. Urgent action is required to reinstate the full program, or the consequences will be dire to sport and leisure, to a wide range of agricultural industries, plus tourism, to the survival of many native species, and to the simple enjoyment of back yards. Continue reading Australia drops the ball on fire ant invasion →

Sundries

Weekly salon 31/5

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I should change the heading to Occasional salon, but hope springs eternal, plus I really don’t have time!

I’ll just try to select a few of the many insights and events which a making our future.

1. A different world order is already here

Geoff Raby in Why a different world order is already here tells us that Jo Biden scuttling back to Washington to deal with the debt ceiling crisis while Chinese President Xi Jinping presided over the third China-Central Asian Summit in the Chinese city of Xian. Continue reading Weekly salon 31/5 →

Sundries

Weekly salon 26/1

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1. Sawatdi bpi mai kap!

I’m late this year, but I’ll start the year again with that Thai new year’s greeting which means means:

    May you find compassion, loving kindness and equanimity along your paths over the next year!

2. The adults are back in charge

Last year I said most people felt well rid of 2021, and hope for better in 2022. Unfortunately hope is hard to find. Greta Thunberg and David Spratt have both said that hope has to be earned. Overall I think we come up short, but politically it is good to have the adults back in charge. Continue reading Weekly salon 26/1 →

Sundries

Seasons greetings 2022

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Until I find a better image of our fair city, I’ll continue to use this one.

2022 went so fast I think I may have missed it. Still my camera says a few things happened.

Although Covid was pronounced ‘over’ we continue to take precautions, so our social life is constrained, being aged and vulnerable. I think this is the first year since I was a young child that I have not been to a movie theatre, a concert or a sporting event.

We did go to the NMQOC Inc Summer Orchid Show 2022 at the Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens. Here’s a sample: Continue reading Seasons greetings 2022 →

Climate Change & Sustainability

COP27 failure (first cut)

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I tried to post a long comment on COP27 this morning, but the system got indigestion, so I’ll do it this way. It’s not finished to my usual standard for published posts.

COP27 is priding itself on setting up a “loss and damage” fund. I’ll just point out that it has no funds yet, and has all the work ahead of it in setting up the mechanisms for getting and distributing funds. So they have actually set up a talkfest. And China is not part of it.

Julian Cribb provides a blunt assessment of COP27 in The world votes for “climate hell”:

    Something of epochal importance happened in Egypt last week – the most significant event since Cheops shoved up his triangular monument, four thousand odd-years ago at the dawn of ‘civilisation’. But the world media, true to form, missed it almost completely. Continue reading COP27 failure (first cut) →
Climate Change & Sustainability, Environment

Farewelling the Great Barrier Reef

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In January this year when David Spratt took a look at whether tipping points had already been passed for critical climate systems he found that coral reefs were in death spiral. From reef ecology scientists:

    “The time between recurrent events is increasingly too short to allow a full recovery of mature coral assemblages, which generally takes from 10 to 15 years for the fastest growing species and far longer for the full complement of life histories and morphologies of older assemblages.”

Mass bleaching occurred in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2020. Continue reading Farewelling the Great Barrier Reef →

Politics & Government

Australian election enters the home strait?

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We are in the home strait now. Which will prevail?

Newspoll (results available on Poll Bludger) shows the yawning gap that has opened up in two party preferred (TPP) terms:

I’ve taken it back to months before the 2019 election, which was on 18 May 2019, to show that the situation now is not like the situation then. With six days to go, incumbent PM Scott Morrison is looking for a miracle. Simon Benson, Political Editor for the Oz, wrote after the penultimate poll:

    According to the latest Newspoll, Labor would not only win government but it would win with a comfortable majority.

    Any notion of a hung parliament is extinguished on these numbers, irrespective of whether any Climate 200 independents get elected or not.

    Morrison needed the the contest to tighten with only two weeks to run. Newspoll has shown the opposite.

Continue reading Australian election enters the home strait? →

Politics & Government, Science

Living and dying with COVID-19

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We don’t use our own brains on Covid rules in Queensland any more. We just follow whatever NSW and Victoria decide.

So Queensland will ease Covid isolation rules from Thursday, bringing the state’s rules closer in line with NSW and Victoria, where ‘living with Covid’ is the go.

From the ABC monitoring site, Omicron is not kind to oldies, especially males:

Continue reading Living and dying with COVID-19 →

Climate change, sustainability, plus sundry other stuff