22/04/2026
Yellow crazy ants have *almost* been eradicated in Kuranda. Consistent funding and monitoring effort is the key to preventing their re-introduction here.
A massive achievement in Far North Queensland! The Wet Tropics Management Authority has announced that a total of 1,255 hectares is now free of yellow crazy ants.
The Invasive Species Council is proud to have long advocated for funding for this important program. But we still need long-term federal support to ensure these sites are not reinfested. 🐜🐜
As it stands, the Queensland government has committed to funding yellow crazy ant eradication until 2028, but the Australian Government are dragging their feet.
Our Advocacy Director Reece Pianta spoke to Yahoo News about some of the consequences if critical support isn’t secured.
‘The program's approaching the halfway mark, and it's working,’ he said.
‘Ten years ago, when I was up there, yellow crazy ants had turned the rainforest around Kuranda silent…they displaced native bird life and insects and wrecked ecosystems.
‘So if there isn’t more federal government funding in the May budget, then the program will effectively be cut in half….If funding runs out, and staff need to be stood down, treatments over the next few years will be reduced.
‘[Yellow crazy ants] form supercolonies with multiple queens and can move into a landscape and just dominate it…so the local wildlife flees, and it destroys the ecosystems of those areas, and they become a dominant invasive species.
‘It would be worse than standing still — the program would actually go backwards, and all of the hard-won gains, the hectares that have been cleared, would be reinfested.
‘This is a small amount of money that is protecting a vital ecosystem, and it’s essential that this funding continues.’
