Traps go up to wipe out pests

The war against European wasps has reached the South West with surveillance traps set up in the region in an effort to keep the State free of the pest.

The Department of Food and Agriculture will set up 550 traps this summer and another 330 traps will be adopted by local governments, community organisations and residents.

European wasps have a negative impact on Australian biodiversity and pose a threat to public health and tourism sectors.

This year 29 of these surveillance traps will be set up in the Bunbury.

WA is one of the only places in the world where the European wasps have not settled, according to Department of Agriculture and Food senior technical officer Marc Widmer.

He said the surveillance traps were first used in 1994 and were a major factor in stopping a regular population of European wasps settling in the South West.

“The traps we set up find 75 per cent of population of these wasps – we can’t stop them from coming but we can start early surveillance,” he said.

“In the last seven years we have only had four to five European wasps nests recorded in WA.”

Mr Widmer’s brother Chris and his family are volunteers for the program. Chris said he started helping out because he wanted to keep his neighbourhood safe from infestation.

“I am yet to find a European wasp in my traps, which is a good thing because we would then have to report it to the authorities who would have to find the nest and destroy it,” he said.

“If people have these traps in place and there is an infestation in the area it means we find it before the queen is mature and the nest spreads.

“I would encourage others to volunteer. If every neighbourhood had one of these we would get the wasp detections a lot earlier and would be able to eradicate them before they become a problem.”