Recently, nine departments of the state jointly launched the national red fire ant joint prevention and control action, this news makes many people curious about the “red fire ant”, for the small ants to be so big fight? In fact, red fire ants are not the same as ordinary ants, and are extremely aggressive, damaging agricultural production, the ecological environment, and in some places, electrical wiring, electrical appliances and other equipment and facilities such as dams. In some places, electrical wiring, electrical appliances and other facilities such as dams have also been damaged. The human body can even die of anaphylaxis after being bitten. This is such a dangerous invasive species, but some people take it as a commodity private trade.
“The ants are so harmful that they are traded as a commodity
The red fire ants, which are similar to ordinary ants in appearance, can cause painful bites like fire burns, and in severe cases, even anaphylactic shock and death; they feed on the seeds, fruits, young shoots, stems and roots of crops, causing considerable damage to crops.
Red fire ants damage the ecological environment and feed heavily on other small animals, such as newly hatched birds, arthropods and earthworms. Red fire ants damage infrastructure and can harm power supply equipment, telecommunication equipment and dams, etc.
However, in addition to sharing their own experiences of being bitten, treatment methods and popular science articles, there are also netizens who have found businesses selling red fire ants on e-commerce platforms, and have posted clues for The report.
The reporter searched for clues and found that the keyword “red fire ant pet” automatically appeared on the e-commerce platform, and although there were many businesses selling various types of ant pets on the page, it was difficult to find traces of red fire ants from the product names. After trying to ask 25 store owners, most of them clearly stated that they do not sell red fire ants. However, the two stores that ship from Guangdong and Fujian are cautious and secretive. They said that the stores do not shelve red fire ants and only provide sales access through forms such as WeChat or phone.
In the phone, the Guangdong seller told reporters, “You ask me on Taobao if there are red fire ants, I will not care about you, the news often reported a while ago, the platform can not sell this stuff.” Similarly, the red fire ant sellers in Fujian also gave a reply on WeChat that “the e-commerce platform can not be on the shelves, the sellers have withdrawn, and now they are selling privately.
The merchants all said they wanted to sell by colony, starting at 1,000 and priced between 60-90 yuan. “Packed up in centrifugal tubes, plastic, not broken.” “Sources” are from Guangdong, the Guangdong businessman said, “We have a lot of this stuff locally, our goods are dug by ourselves.” Fujian merchants are through the inter-provincial purchase and come, “on a nest can come out, just arrived today, there are ants queen. You don’t want me to sell others.”
In fact, the two merchants know the danger of red fire ants, “this thing is more dangerous, bite to the words will grow pus, rotting off. If you have a sensitive body, you will be allergic and have a fever, and you will die if you don’t get an injection. It is also harmful to the environment, running outside then reproduce quickly, adaptability and strong.”
The businessman in Fujian confessed that every time the red fire ants bought from elsewhere have to “check the goods”, inevitably will be bitten, “I am often bitten by it, almost the same as the mosquito bite will be bruised, itchy.”
Even so, there are still a lot of buyers patronizing, the businessman in Guangdong revealed that before the live broadcast bought away more than 100,000, “they slaughtered the chicken to feed the ants, a day or two to eat up.”
Suspected of breaking the law state explicitly prohibits the trade of invasive organisms
In addition, Beiqing – Beijing headline reporter also noticed that in some posts related to red fire ants message area below, had filled with a lot of information on the sale, some netizens disobeyed to stab ants nest. According to a video uploaded by a netizen stabbing a red fire ant nest, he used a tree branch to pound the mound of soil where the red fire ant nest was hidden a dozen times, and the dense red fire ants poured out of the nest, some red fire ants climbed up with the branch, the netizen left a message under the video, “Don’t look at its small size, a bite hurts like hell.” Others claim that they intend to dig it up and sell it online to find buyers, but most of these posts have now been deleted.
For this dangerous behavior, Lu Yongyue, director of the Red Fire Ant Research Center at South China Agricultural University, said that the red fire ant is a quarantine pest, and according to the relevant laws and regulations on bio-quarantine management, it is strictly prohibited to transfer, transport, and spread. Once found to the relevant agencies in the area of occurrence is a more reasonable way to report, “for example, in the community occurred, reported to the neighborhood committee or street; found in the park, reported to the park management …… these will eventually be implemented to the local agriculture and forestry department in charge of the matter. “
Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University School of Plant Protection Professor Hou Youming also cautioned that the state explicitly prohibits the peddling of invasive organisms, the trade of invasive organisms, artificial proliferation. “Never touch an ant nest, the right thing to do is to immediately report to the local agriculture and forestry department.” He said the state attaches great importance to the red fire ant invasion, “because the lessons of the red fire ant invasion in other countries such as the United States are very profound, and we have clearly seen that it is very harmful. Since 2004 the country has begun to layout to do this work.”
According to Hou Youming, the red fire ant is very different compared to general pests. As a social insect, it has a strong ability to adapt to the environment, spread and reproduce, and is very harmful to the environment. If the monitoring and control is not in place, it will definitely aggravate the spread and harm of the epidemic. “However, it is still preventable and controllable, and now there are already good control techniques, and good results have been achieved.”
Lu Yongyue also said that through more than a decade of research at home and abroad, the prevention and control technology has been very mature. At present, the most commonly used are two ways: one is to use baits for booby-trapping, which can be spread manually or by drones; the second is to use powder to exterminate individual ant nests. “With the right measures, controlling and exterminating red fire ants will be very effective.”
Red fire ant invasion hurts people and destroys agriculture and ecology
Red fire ants are a national agricultural, forestry and inbound phytosanitary pest, and one of the 100 most dangerous invasive species recognized globally. Influenced by factors such as the increase in the number of commodity transfers and suitable climatic conditions, the spread of red fire ants has accelerated and increased in recent years in some provinces and regions.
According to the latest monitoring data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the red fire ant has now spread to 435 counties (cities and districts) in 12 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), especially in the past five years, 191 new red fire ants occurred in county-level administrative regions, doubled from 2016, in urban parks and green spaces, farmland, woodlands and other public areas.
According to the official website of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the red fire ant, also known as the invasive red fire ant, is a major dangerous pest in the Hymenoptera, family Antidae, genus Fire Ant.
Red fire ants are highly reproductive, spread widely and are difficult to control. One queen can lay 1500-5000 eggs per day and the queen lives for 6-7 years. They can spread by crawling, natural migration, spreading with water flow, or enter other countries or regions by man-made means such as garbage transportation, horticultural plant pollution, turf pollution, soil waste movement, composting, horticultural farming equipment and equipment, empty container pollution, vehicle pollution, etc.
The red fire ant originates from South America, including countries such as Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. The insect invaded the United States in 1930 and has since been distributed in 13 southern U.S. states as well as Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Australia and Taoyuan, Chiayi and Taipei in Taiwan Province of China.
At the end of 2004, an epidemic of the dangerous pest red fire ant was found in Wuchuan City, Guangdong Province. Based on the growth of the red fire ant in Wuchuan, experts judged that the presence of the red fire ant in China was not recent and had been reproducing for some time, so it was likely to be present in other parts of the country. So, the Ministry of Agriculture decisively and urgently organized a nationwide census. As a result of the national census, it was found that red fire ants occurred in 16 prefectures in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Hunan provinces (districts), with an area of 195,000 mu. According to statistics, more than 15,000 people have been stung and injured in the red fire ant occurrence area, and more than 200 people need to receive specialized treatment.
On January 17, 2005, the Ministry of Agriculture immediately issued a notice designating the red fire ant as an inbound phytosanitary pest in China and a national phytosanitary pest to be blocked and controlled.
Many countries around the world have paid a heavy economic price because of the invasion of red fire ants.
Some data show that more than 100 million acres of land in the United States are occupied by exotic red fire ants, causing economic losses to the infested areas estimated at more than $5 billion per year, resulting in agricultural losses of about $750 million or more.
The invasion of red fire ants has caused relatively serious harm to agricultural production, human and animal health, and the ecological environment in China. In some places, vegetable fields are sparse, rice fields are abandoned and orchards are deserted; human and animal bites have affected the normal life of local people.
The most important thing is that you should not take it lightly if you are bitten.
Why has the corresponding prevention and control methods, but still caused the spread of the trend? Lu Yongyue said that the strong reproductive ability of the red fire ant is a very important reason, “It has a stronger reproductive ability and a greater potential, so it is easy to break out in epidemics after invasion in various places. Overall, there are more in the south than in the north, such as Fujian, Guangdong, Hainan, Guangxi and Yunnan.”
Hou Youming added that the red fire ant invasion was first discovered from Taiwan province around 2003, entered Guangdong province in 2004, and spread in Guangxi and Fujian in 2005. It has developed rapidly since then, especially in recent years. “On the one hand, it is because the climate environment in the south is suitable for the survival and development of red fire ants; on the other hand, it is also related to frequent trade, movement of people, infrastructure greening, transfer of flowers and seedlings, and proliferation of garbage.”
For the human body, how to avoid the problem of red fire ant injury, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs official has also introduced, red fire ants generally like to have sunlight in the garden green space, farmland ridge, wasteland, grass, garbage piles, orchards and other places nesting activities, in the human interference with their activities before biting and injuring people, especially unconscious touching the nest is easy to be bitten. The chances of being bitten by red fire ants can be reduced by setting up warning signs around their nests, not actively destroying their nests, and wearing rain shoes.
Lu Yongyue also reminds that as long as you don’t move it, the likelihood of being bitten is relatively small. “Other toxic ant species are still relatively few in our country at the moment, and the vast majority of ants do not inject venom like the red fire ant, nor do they have such a large number and density. That’s what draws attention to it.”
He introduced, in general, when the red fire ant activity or nest is disturbed, the red fire ant will attack the intruder, stinging people with the tail chelipeds, injecting toxic protein into the human skin, and generally the wound appears itchy and painful, red and swollen, etc. Washing with soap and water and applying cool oil, etc. can relieve the pain. “Some people will have mild symptoms and just need to do a good job of cleaning and applying ointment. However, the more sensitive people will have more serious semi- or generalized allergies. Once the symptoms appear, go to the hospital immediately.”
Hou Youming also pointed out that people will itch after being bitten by red fire ants, and allergic people may experience chest tightness, shock or even death. It does not exclude that some individuals are less affected by the bite, but the harm should not be downplayed because of individual differences.
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