Sign up to receive updates from the Invasive Species Council's Townsville Yellow Crazy Ant Community Taskforce

How to help | Take action

Highly aggressive yellow crazy ants are listed as one of the top 100 worst invasive species in the world, and sadly, have made it into northern Australia through our ports. Capable of forming super colonies, they threaten our Wet Tropics World Heritage Area and carry huge social, environmental and financial impacts.

That’s why we’ve joined Townsville City Council in the battle against yellow crazy ants in Queensland’s far north.

Our volunteers Bev Job and Janet Cross are working with local communities to eradicate yellow crazy ants, which have been present in Nome, just south of Townsville, since 2008.

Why we need your help?

Yellow crazy ants are in the top 100 most invasive species list.
These ants have infested a 40 hectare area in Nome, south of Townsville.
They have invaded property owners’ houses and removed native wildlife from this area.
This infestation is near Mount Elliot, Bowling Green National Park, a sanctuary for many threatened species, including northern quolls and the black-throated finch.
Townsville City Council is baiting to eradicate this species but your help is needed for baiting, monitoring and surveying for this species.
Eradication is achievable with the help and dedication of the community.

How you can help?

Signup to the taskforce with the form below.
Volunteers will be trained in the baiting, monitoring and surveying of yellow crazy ants.
Our community coordinator organises the taskforce and is working with Townsville City Council.

This project is supported by the Queensland Government’s Community Sustainability Action grant program.

Sign up now

[caldera_form id="CF5b7270d5aba33"]

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]