Fire Ant Eradication Fails; Park Reinfested
Three months after being bombarded with poison, fire ants have returned to O’Neill Regional Park in Orange County’s Trabuco Canyon, showing how difficult it is to wipe out the invaders.
“We knocked them down real well, and then all of the sudden in the last week or two they picked up again,” said Tim Miller, manager of Orange County’s Harbors, Beaches and Parks Division.
While county officials have employed a wipe ‘em out quick strategy, state agriculture workers have opted for a birth control approach, which takes as long as six weeks to destroy a colony. State officials say the strategy is the most effective because it is designed to sterilize to the queen.
“The main thing you need to do is get the queen,” said Joan Scheiman, manager of the state’s fire ant eradication project in Orange County.
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