County Escalates Its Ground War Against Fire Ant

It’s not as if the county is declaring defeat in its nearly 2-year-old battle with the red imported fire ant. Far from it. But for the first time, officials are beginning to wonder when--or even if--they can win the war, which has cost about $4 million so far.

Officials used to count colonies of fire ants and treat them with pesticides. These days--five months after a million-dollar push to make residents more aware of the problem with billboards, television and radio spots--the colonies are so numerous that it’s pointless to count them. And instead of treating individual colonies, authorities are treating entire neighborhoods in one swoop, using pesticide-armed golf carts and a dozen workers.

“It’s getting so bad it is hard to keep track, so we thought . . . we had to step up our approach to something more efficient,” said Mike Hearst of the Orange County Fire Ant Authority, established with $5.9 million in funding from the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

To date, the Fire Ant Authority has spent about $4 million combating the ants, with about $400,000 of that going for pesticides and chemicals. Most of the money has been used to pay the salaries of the 34 employees who spray chemicals, and to purchase vehicles and equipment such as global positioning systems to track the number of mounds.

Fire ants resemble other ants, but their sting, which feels like a bee sting, can be fatal to the small percentage of people who are allergic. Often, victims are stung a dozen times or more; sometimes the ants invade homes looking for food, crawling into cupboards, crevices and beds.

Orange County officials remain hopeful that they can eradicate the fire ants, because the relatively dry California climate should make them easier to kill.

But others have their doubts.

Charles L. Barr, a fire ant researcher at Texas A&M; University, believes the war will never be won.

“I just don’t think it is possible anymore,” he said, noting that the best authorities can do in Texas is to keep the ant problem from getting worse. “But you don’t want to throw up your hands and surrender the West Coast either, so you have to keep trying.”

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Which is why Orange County is now taking on entire neighborhoods with a small army of exterminators and an electric golf cart. An exterminator on the cart sprays a small amount--no more than a spoonful--of ant sterilizer on lawns. The chemical looks like corn meal and isn’t harmful to humans. Other exterminators walk through backyards, in sync with the cart, also spraying the chemical. So far, neighborhoods in Cypress, near Rancho Santa Margarita and Coto de Caza have been treated.

Nobody knows how the ants got here, but their likely modes of transportation include sod or other nursery products, or perhaps even hidden between packages of frozen chicken and bottles of ketchup. Experts cite late 1998 as the ants’ arrival date and believe they spread through soil at nurseries.

Orange County officials believe that about 4,000 acres here are infested. The ants also have invaded Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties.

“When you are dealing with that much area, it only makes sense to treat bigger,” said Chris Cusack, a zone coordinator with the county’s Fire Ant Authority. Cusack said the neighborhood-wide approach seemingly has worked so far--88% of ants die after the first of four treatments, according to Fire Ant Authority figures--but he added that it might be too soon to tell if the tactic will work in the long term.

“I’m really happy with the approach because before we were just putting out brush fires. Now we’re trying to deal with the whole fire,” he said. “Treating big areas helps with the question of ‘Where are the ants?’ because we’re just trying to treat everything, even areas we don’t know have fire ants.”

Exterminators use a chemical called Pyriproxyfen, which is birth control for ants. Fire ants are extremely resilient and strong--a handful of them can move an aquarium-size load of dirt overnight, experts said.

This is the third tactic tried here to eradicate the ants. Before the county authority was formed, state officials asked residents to pour boiling water and use over-the-counter chemicals on mounds. But that made the problem worse. The ants--which live so deeply in the dirt that hot water and pesticides never reached the queen--simply would become angry and divide by building even more colonies.

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The second tactic, this one undertaken by the Fire Ant Authority, was to treat individual homes and a few homes surrounding the affected homes. But the ants can move so fast that they sometimes travel two homes away and set up housekeeping. Often it would take months for an infestation to become apparent, and by then the problem was as big as it once was elsewhere in the neighborhood.

Barr, the Texas A&M; expert, likens the ants’ progression to the mole-and-shoe game at the carnival: “You hit the mole on the head with the shoe, and it just pops up again somewhere else. The ants just keep marching on.”

In other states, experts have used the Brazilian phorid fly to fight the ants; the minuscule bug uses the ants as surrogates for their eggs, which hatch and consume the ant. But California officials say that those states are using the fly only to keep their ant problem at bay and that the tactic does little to reduce the red ant population. Even Barr, who has dedicated months to researching the phorid fly, said it isn’t enough to combat the ants.

And that’s why California officials believe the key to winning the ant war is fighting speed with speed. Treating an entire neighborhood decreases the ants’ range; even if they flee, and quickly, five homes away, the chemical is there.

“They move fast. There’s no way to know what will happen,” Hearst said. “There’s no book to follow. We’re writing this book as we go along. We’re going along as fast as we can.”

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To report fire ants, call (888) 4FIREANT or visit the Fire Ant Authority Web site at https://www.ocfireant.com.

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The Cost of Fire Ant Fight

The county has spent about $4 million trying to battle the red imported fire ant in the first 12 months of its abatement program. Approximate expenses, by category:

* Personnel (24 permanent and 10 seasonal employees): $1.17 million

* Start-up costs (vehicles, furniture, etc.): $9.75 million

* Eradication materials (chemicals, baits, etc.): $400,000

* Outreach and Advertising (printing, community events): $400,000

* Operations (rents, utilities, equipment maintenance, information systems such as Global Positioning Systems): $975,000

Source: O.C. Fire Ant Authority