red fire ants and real estate

[mary]

i just learned from someone at the university extension services that red fire ants have invaded BI and now are spreading at an alarming rate.
they blind pets with their bites, bite kids and adults and are impossible to fully eradicate. this person said the whole BI will be inundated by them within 5 to 10 years... that sounds scary. then i worry about my house purchase, will the price plummet into the dumpster?
[!]
what do you think of this?

[missydog1]

There have been fire ants here for years; it's not new, is it? I know they can blind pets, but mine have lived around them without mishap. Bufo toads can kill pets too, and there are lots of them, but it's not a disaster.

Fire ants are nasty but I don't see them ruining the island.

"Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean." — Bob Dylan

[TrevorKane]

Fire ants are a nasty piece of work, and they can spell doom for some vulnerable species that raise their young on the ground (like quail), but they are not the apocalypse.

Main thing I have noticed about fire ants is that they breed like mad in buried vegetation - so if your lot has been ripped & rolled in the last ten years, you might have a real problem for awhile.

We had a road built through woods in Florida - the man we hired to do the work was very conscientious to remove the vegetation from the road bed before laying down a layer of clean soil on top. The man he hired as a sub to get the job done on-time was not so conscientious. Guess which part of the road was filled with fire ant mounds, and which was not? Ten years later, the ant mounds aren't so dense, but there are still a few around, and there always will be due to naturally occurring pockets of dead roots.

They do an impressive job of picking a deer skeleton clean.

[Orchidlandguy]

Several years ago I purchased some plants at Maku'u Market that brough fire ants to my property. They are still here on my Orchidland property. I had to disclose this in selling my property. It did not effect the sales price.

[missydog1]

Six years ago I was worried that if I didn't keep the coquis off my property, that they would ruin my chance of selling. A couple years ago, I had this property up for sale -- buyers asked if there were coquis, and I said, of course, like, whatevahs.

It was mostly a matter of acceptance.

The extension people know their stuff, and I don't dispute what they say, but anecdotally, we had one spot on our Hilo property that had LFA, treated them with Andro a couple times, and they weren't in evidence after that.

Likewise, when I moved to this property, there were the large red ants, not LFA, but with a mean bite. I treated them, and it's been a couple years since I've been bitten. Knock on wood.

Don't get me wrong, the ants absolutely suck and it's a major drag they got imported. But personally I have way more issues with the centipedes, and they've been here for ages. Jack London even wrote a story about a centipede dropping off the ceiling on a woman he was talking too (in Kona), and that was a century ago.

Didn't hurt the property values. []

"Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean." — Bob Dylan

[hikatz]

West Hawaii Today ran an article on fire ants last year

http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/...ures02.txt

http://www.mauiinformationguide.com/little-fire-ant.php
at the end of the article, gives info: about using pesticides on the fire ant

[TrevorKane]

Amdro and similar organophosphates work well on fire ants, and they make the grass green(er) where you use them, but I'd keep them away (far far away) from children whose brains are still growing, adults who have a history of cancer in the family, anyone with a sensitive nervous system, and small pets that you like.

[ericlp]

yep... the worst is LFA when they get into the coconut tree's. Every time the wind blows it rains 1/8 of an inch super tine fire ants that sting like crazy. So if you got 3 acres it's almost impossible to treat and don't even think about going in with a machete and hacking throw trimming up your palms that line your 500' driveway. It's a REAL chore to maintain your 3 acre paradise with fire ants. That's why it really didn't bother me to buy .3 acre at least you can treat your entire yard with out going broke on chemicals to treat large acres. Like it or not LFA is everywhere. The sad part is you get cinder or dirt from just about anywhere and running the risk of transporting them. Buy any plants, or even have your yard mowed. If you hire someone to mow your lawn and they just ran their equipment on someones yard with LFA your chances of your yard getting infected or worse re-infected is pretty high.

Hopefully they don't become resistant to Amdro. Smaller lot, less privacy but much easier to maintain IMO.

Hopefully we don't start importing Snakes, and other more nasty invasive species. I don't think Fire Ants are going to reduce your property costs, You also gotta watch out for those stinging caterpillars as well.

Maybe we could tell everyone to leave the island for a month while we nuke the entire island of all insects and frogs. Basically start over again. Come back and not even have a mosquito! I wonder how long it would take to get em all back again. Would be nice not to have any roaches eh? Oh NO you didn't tell em you had roaches did you? That's the worst. Can't sell anything if you got one of those things in your house!

[Kelena]

With 1 agricultural inspector island-wide, it wouldn't take long for the invasive species to come again. Need more ag inspectors. A veritable army, really. The Big Island is particularly sloppy about all of this.

[Chuysmom]

Out watering my garden two weeks ago and all of a sudden I felt bites all over my ankles...they were so painful I actually ran my butt into the house and jumped in the shower and sprayed my ankles off! Gosh they hurt! Never had that one happen here before. I knew we had them but kinda forgot about it until that incident.