To assist communities, the program is providing a free kit of information for anyone interested in working with neighbors either with all of their neighbors on the block or through formal homeowners organization. The kits available at county extension offices will help homeowners design, implement and evaluate a fire ant management program for the entire area. Initiating these programs in the spring, and then possibly reapplying them in the fall, will get fire ants under control and keep them under control. Do It Yourself Fire Ant Control for Homes and Neighborhoods, which explains that method of managing fire ants. In older, shaded neighborhoods or newly-infested West Texas counties, for instance, where there just are few fire ant mounds and a lot of native ants, he recommended using only individual mound treatments to preserve native ant species.
Native ants are the biotic resistance that help defend areas from really high levels of fire ants.
Also, some organic methods can be used. The community-wide pilot programs that have already been implemented under the fire ant program in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin and Georgetown have proven successful. The effect on neighborhoods has been very positive, he said, as well. People who get together in neighborhoods collectively learn more about fire ants and their management, and it brings the community together as sort of a side benefit because they're achieving a common goal. The Texas fire ant project was developed in response to an act authored by Rep. Tom Ramsay in 1995.