A group of 4 people, all of whom looked, and spoke, like Americans were visitors to the tasting room this week. Two turned out to be from the Portland area, and one from elsewhere in the U.S., but one of the guys said he was from Germany. He is actually currently living in Rwanda and working on hydroelectric plants there. I didn’t get any other details, unfortunately.
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I got into an interesting conversation with another man who has the newer version of the Sony Handycam video camera that I have. Of course, his is half the size, and weight, of mine. After discovering that he was a student at Louisiana State University, he quickly rattled off three things he does there. I heard fire ants in the middle of his words and asked him to back up and explain. Was it his graduate thesis? He laughed and said he is a mere undergraduate, and no, it is one of his jobs. They are studying ways to try and effectively eradicate fire ants as most “solutions” so far just seem to touch the surface of any actual decrease in their population, in general. They are an interesting phenomenon to those of us from the West Coast, so I found the following information from Wikipedia interesting:
Although most fire ant species do not bother people and are not invasive due to biological factors, Solenopsis invicta, commonly known as the Red imported fire ant (or RIFA) is an invasive pest in many areas of the world, notably the United States, Australia, the Philippines, China and Taiwan. The RIFA was accidentally introduced into the United States due to a South American cargo ship coming to an Alabama port in 1918, but now infests the majority of the Southern and Southwestern United States.
In the US, the FDA estimates that more than US$5 billion is spent annually on medical treatment, damage, and control in RIFA-infested areas. Furthermore, the ants cause approximately US$750 million in damage annually to agricultural assets, including veterinarian bills and livestock loss as well as crop loss.[2] Since September 2004, Taiwan has been seriously affected by the red fire ant.
The US, Taiwan and Australia all have ongoing national efforts to control or eradicate the species, but, other than Australia, none have been especially effective. In Australia an intensive program costing A$175 million has, at February 2007, eradicated 99% of fire ants from the sole infestation occurring in South East Queensland.
FYI: The Australian Eradication Program is now running at about A$200m outlaid since early 2001. The Program has (on current evidence) killed off two of the three established and distinct RIFA infestations to have been discovered in Queensland since 2000, and is pursuing the remaining queens from the remaining infestation in South East Queensland (in areas mostly south and west of Brisbane). The tools and systems being deployed have been established to work across wide (but not unlimited) acreage in both urban and rural areas, and potential collateral damage to the environment or other arthoropods has been minimised – particularly by comparison with the effects on ecosystems witnessed in long-term RIFA-infested areas of the US.
Obviously, you are very well versed on fire ants. Thanks for the input, and maybe the US can learn from the success you seem to be having in Australia.