Regional Information about Fire Ants

Fire Ant Programs WithIn the U.S.

Fire ants are found in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and sporadically in Maryland. They have also been accidentally introduced to other countries. Information on fire ants specific to your state or territory is found below. This information includes preferred management practices for fire ant control, distribution maps, and local regulations.

NOTE: Though all the locations with state abbreviations on the map above have fire ants, linked information pages may be under construction or information may not be available. Those locations are denoted by an asterisk in the text links below.

Click on your state on the above map to learn more about fire ants in that state or use the text links below, or use the text links in the table below. NOTE: The map will not work on some devices. In that case, use the text links below.

Alabama	Louisiana	North Carolina	Virginia
Arkansas	Maryland *	Oklahoma	Puerto Rico *
California	Mississippi	South Carolina	Outside the U.S.
Florida	Missouri *	Tennessee
Georgia *	New Mexico *	Texas

Fire Ant Programs Outside the United States

The red imported fire ant originated in South America. It was accidentally introduced into the southern United States around the 1930’s. More recently, it has been detected in parts of Australia, Taiwan, China and Mexico (Drees 2009). A few colonies have also been found in New Zealand. In each of these cases, efforts have been made to determine the spread, limit spread and/or attempt suppression or eradication efforts (Oi and Drees 2009).