Stop fire ants in their tracks

Fire ants are slipping through the cracks and threatening to wipe out millions of native animals. Your gift will fuel our campaign to hold governments to account and push for the urgent, full-scale response this crisis demands.

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This month, fire ants were discovered across five coal mine sites in Central Queensland, on top of new detections in New South Wales and Western Australia. These tiny killers are spreading into places they’ve never been before.

This is not bad luck. It’s a catastrophic breach.

If governments keep stalling, eradication will fail, and we will be left with a permanent fire ant future.

We have already seen what’s coming. An echidna was found dead on a fire ant nest in Queensland. This is the cruel fate that awaits millions of animals if fire ants are allowed to spread.

Government scientists have warned: echidnas, koalas, and even endangered loggerhead turtles will be killed or injured if fire ants are not stopped.

The federal, NSW and ACT governments have already committed part of a $592 million plan to eradicate fire ants. But the program is still short $135–140 million. Suppression is dangerously underfunded, outbreaks are breaking containment, and nest densities are exploding south of Brisbane.

Every day of delay gives fire ants the upper hand. Once they spread further, eradication will no longer be possible.

Your donation will help us hold governments to account and push for the urgent, full-scale response this crisis demands.

With your support, we can demand governments:

  • Treat fire ants as a national emergency

  • Fund suppression properly and in time

  • Fix the failures that are letting outbreaks spread

Fire ants are here. They are spreading. And they will wipe out wildlife on a scale greater than any invasive species in our history – unless we stop them now.

This is our last chance to protect the frogs, reptiles, birds and mammals that make Australia unique.

Please make an urgent gift today and help ensure fire ants are eradicated before they destroy our natural heritage.

Thank you for helping us protect Australia’s vulnerable wildlife from invasive fire ants. Every generous gift, big or small makes a difference. Want to give regularly? Support our work with a monthly donation.

Your donations make an impact for nature

In 2025 we won an extension of funding for national invasive species coordinators for feral deer, cats, foxes and pigs. These roles are essential to ensuring coordinated action across state lines for 4 of Australia’s most destructive feral animals.

In 2025, our volunteers collected over 11,000 handwritten signatures calling for the repeal of laws protecting feral horses in Kosciuszko – and not a single MP opposed it in a debate in Parliament. A powerful sign of how far public and political opinion has shifted.

In 2024, our campaigning around the Queensland election helped secure: 150 new national park rangers; a $117.84 million boost to natural resource management (NRM); 100 additional Biosecurity Officers and a $50 million increase to Biosecurity Queensland funding.

 

In 2024, we won almost $100 million in federal funding to strengthen biosecurity preparations against the new deadly bird flu (H5N1) to save Australia’s birds and native mammals.

In 2025, we won $700,000 from the Australian Government for trout-free havens for 5 critically endangered native fish species.

In 2025 we helped change an outdated law that prohibited the success of Kangaroo Island’s feral cat eradication program, ensuring it stays on track for success.

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.

But you can help to turn this around and create a wildlife revival in Australia. 

From numbats to night parrots, a tax-deductible donation today can help defend our wildlife against the threat of invasive weeds, predators, and diseases.

As the only national advocacy environment group dedicated to stopping this mega threat, your gift will make a big difference.

Do you need help?

Accordion Content

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]