Fire ant quarantine lingers for 20 Oklahoma counties
BY JESSE OLIVAREZ
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Published: October 25, 2009
A federal quarantine has been imposed on the movement of agricultural products in southern Oklahoma in an effort to stem the spread of fire ants.
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Fire ants
The high volume of fire ant colonies in southern Oklahoma has prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state Department of Agriculture to impose a state and federal quarantine of certain agricultural products in southern Oklahoma. Affected counties: Atoka, Bryan, Carter, Choctaw, Coal, Comanche, Cotton, Garvin, Jackson, Jefferson, Johnston, Le Flore, Love, Marshall, McCurtain, Murray, Pontotoc, Pushmataha, Stephens and Tillman.
Banned products
→Imported fire ant queens and reproducing colonies of imported fire ants.
→Soil, separate or with other things (potting soil is exempt if commercially prepared, packaged and shipped in original container).
→Plants with roots and soil attached, except houseplants maintained indoors and not for sale.
→Grass sod.
→Baled hay and straw that has been in contact with soil.
→Used soil-moving equipment.
→Any product or any agriculture machinery that a state inspector has determined can be carrying the ant.
ONLINE
For more
information, go to www.ento.okstate.edu/fireants/fireants.html.
The quarantine, which went into effect in March, requires producers of hay, sod, plants and other agricultural products to submit to state inspections before their products can be hauled to other parts of the state.
Jack Carson, spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, said the quarantine was imposed in 20 counties because of the high number of fire ants found there. The quarantine is similar to those that have been imposed in
Alabama,
Louisiana,
Mississippi,
Tennessee and
Texas.
The ants causing the big fuss are not ordinary ants. They are the red imported fire ants.
According to research conducted by the
U.S. Department of Agriculture, the ants arrived in this country in the early 1900s. At the time, cargo ships hauling items from
South America used soil as ballast and the ants caught a free ride to this country. The ants first arrived in Alabama and have since spread to infest more than 320 million acres across the southern
U.S.
Since arriving in Oklahoma in 1985, the ants can now be found in 40 counties.
Eric Rebek, an assistant professor of entomology at
Oklahoma State University, said the ants spread primarily now as they did then, as stowaways in agricultural products.
What makes the ants so dangerous is their aggressive behavior, he said. When these ants bite something, they let off a pheromone that causes other fire ants in the area to swarm to that spot and bite. Such behavior has led to the deaths of small animals and even larger animals like newborn calves.
State officials have tried various techniques including the reintroduction of the phorid fly, a natural enemy of the fire ant which unlike the ant is native to Oklahoma.
The phorid fly attacks fire ants by piercing the ant’s outer shell and depositing an egg. In time, the egg grows and eventually kills the ant.
Carson said state officials will closely monitor the ants’ spread in the state. Until then, they will continue to enforce the quarantine in effect in southern Oklahoma in the hope the ants do not take hold further north.
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Nature and the Environment,
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Wildlife,
Agriculture Policy,
Insects
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