Prof Oscar Cacho and Dr Susie Hester from the UNE Business School.

By Amanda Burdon

Community surveillance is an important and cost-effective tool in the fight to contain the red imported fire ant, and a UNE team has the figures to prove it.

With Federal and State agriculture ministers agreeing last week to spend almost $400 million over the next decade to try to eradicate the destructive pest, Professor Oscar Cacho and Dr Susie Hester advised surveillance agencies to consider their world-first economic modelling.

The researchers from the UNE School of Business have found that for every dollar spent engaging members of the public to keep an eye out for ants (known as passive surveillance), Biosecurity Queensland has saved $60 on active surveillance costs.

“Community reports of chance sightings can lead to significant cost savings, especially in high-density areas,” Professor Cacho said.

“It was a report from a member of the public that led to the detection of fire ants in Queensland in the first place.”

Their modelling, which used data provided by the Biosecurity Queensland Control Centre (BQCC), is the first analysis of its kind of the role community surveillance can play in pest and disease management. It demonstrates the collaboration needed to help protect Australia from introduced pests and diseases.

The fire ant has been contained largely to south-east Queensland, however there are concerns that it may easily cross the border into NSW.

Biosecurity Queensland currently relies on a mixture of surveillance methods, combining detection of fire ants by its own trained officers with support from volunteers, the use of remote-sensing technology and public reporting. However, until recently it was not known whether the $861,000 the agency spent each year up until 2010 on community engagement represented good value for money. Now the payoff is clear.

“It all comes down to probabilities – the probability of the ants being in the landscape, of a person detecting them and then the probability of that person reporting the sighting,” Professor Cacho said.

“Detecting nests earlier reduces the number of new nests produced and the future spread of ants, so increases in the probability of passive surveillance can improve the probability of achieving eradication and containment.

“Reports of fire ant nests from the public would not have occurred without effective community engagement by the BQCC.”

Passive surveillance is not without cost. It involves maintaining a hotline and funding education and social media campaigns, displays and even rewards, however Professor Cacho and Dr Hester’s analysis of Biosecurity Queensland data from 2007-2010 shows that effective community engagement can have huge pay-offs.

“Rewards can be particularly useful when interest from the public is starting to wane,” Dr Hester said.

“A reward scheme introduced in 2008, when people received $500 for reporting new fire ant nests, created additional awareness.

“Stories in local newspapers provided extra exposure of the problem and motivated people to look for ants.”