Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Volume 53 (Autumn 1994), p. 320 The Red Imported Fire Ant: Mythology and Public Policy, 1957-1992 ELIZABETH F. SHORES * THE STORY OF ARKANSAS'S efforts to cope with the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) is an example of the power of fear and mythology over reason in the development of public policy. Fear and myth supported a protracted war against the fire ant, and even though federal, state, and local governments finally relinquished the battle, the public continued to clamor for action, unwilling to yield to the ant or to renounce the myth that humans can and should destroy it. The mythology of the fire ant assumed that government could defeat the enemy insect and did not recognize the ecological imbalance or the human actions that enabled the red imported fire ant to prosper in the South. In responding to public pressure for eradication of the fire ant, government in Arkansas reinforced the mythology that the ants were evil and that society was morally right in attempting to exterminate it. It also reinforced the erroneous belief in the feasibility and wisdom of eradication as a policy. Public policy only belatedly reflected the need for a cost-benefit analysis of various ant control techniques. South American fire ants, specifically the black fire ant, apparently first came to the United states in 1918 aboard a cargo ship which docked at Mobile. Alabama (1). _______________________ * Elizabeth F. Shores is a student in the public history program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and publications editor of the Southern Early Childhood Association. 1. Edward O. Wilson, "Variation and Adaption in the Imported Fire Ant," Evolution 5 (March 1951): 68-79; Edward O. Wilson, "Invader of the South," Natural History 48 (1959): 276-281; S. Bradleigh Vinson and A. Ann Sorensen, Imported Fire Ants: Life History and Impact, (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Department of Entomology, 1986), 4-5.           Contents  Words  Study Questions  Related Sites Next