Fire ant emergency
Fire ants are on the march. Once contained to Queensland, they recently spread to New South Wales, threatening the Murray Darling Basin. If left unchecked, fire ants can swarm across vast areas of Australia and devastate our wildlife, economy, and communities. To protect our way of life, decision-makers in parliament need to hear from you, and thousands of others telling them it should be a priority.
Cats in Australia are responsible for the deaths of an estimated >2 billion animals per year. To protect wildlife, we must ensure stronger government action to reduce the impact of feral cats and roaming pet cats.
How To Help | Take Action
We’ve never been closer to losing the battle for a fire-ant-free Australia.
For two decades, these little killers have been confined to south east Queensland. Now, outbreaks have appeared in New South Wales, and a new infestation has been found west of Toowoomba, just inside the northern tip of the Murray-Darling Basin.
If left to run rampant, it’s only a matter of time before fire ants form rafts and float with water currents during wet weather to new locations. From there, they could rapidly spread to vast areas of Australia.
Recently, the Senate inquiry into fire ants found there would be ‘disastrous consequences’ if fire ants spread across Australia.
It called for an urgent review of funding and other changes to the response program if we are to win the battle to keep Australia fire-ant-free. At the inquiry, experts warned:
- Fire ants will harm our iconic platypus, echidna, koala and turtle populations.
- Stings from swarming fire ants may cause around 650,000 medical appointments yearly, straining our health system even further.
- Damage from fire ants will cost our country more than $2 billion yearly, or 2.7% of Australia’s GDP. That is half the cost of COVID-19!
To win government action, we need to show governments that urgent action on invasive fire ants is popular. Put your mark on the map by taking the pledge!
The federal and state governments must take urgent action to avoid this unfolding nightmare. If they don’t step up, eradication will fail. We must hold governments accountable and demand additional funding and resources for fire ant eradication while there’s still time.
The eradication of fire ants is a national emergency — it needs a full national emergency-level response.
To achieve a fire-ant-free Australia, we need decision-makers to know that thousands of Australians support increased action and funding for eradication. You can help by emailing the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton, Leader of the Nationals David Littleproud and Leader of the Greens Adam Bandt to show your support for urgent eradication.
Please note, submissions will only appear on the map if you provide an address when filling out the form. To ensure your privacy, addressed submissions are only mapped to a broad neighbourhood area and don’t become visible until enough other people in your area also make the pledge. Individual addresses are NOT identifiable on this map.
Map or form not displaying correctly? You can visit an external version of this action page here.
We want to ensure every state allows the full suite of feral cat control tools, so that land managers have the best chance of driving down feral cat numbers. Roaming pet cats are also diminishing local populations of birds, small mammals and reptiles. We need to ensure Australia’s 4.9 million pet cats are kept safe at home and not allowed to roam.
Please show your support by taking the pledge today. Your pledge will be one of many that shows widespread support for action on cats to protect our wildlife.