October is a month filled with monsters and scares, but scarier than any creature from the Black Lagoon are the real creatures invading the Hawaiian Islands.
The state Department of Land and Natural Resources declared October "Stop the Ant" month to raise awareness of the state's invasive fire ant species.
StoptheAnt.org provides a dashboard with snapshots of where little fire ants have spread their nasty sting across the state.
To learn more, HPR spoke with Taylor Kellerman, the manager of diversified agriculture and land stewardship for Kualoa Ranch.
Little fire ants first became an issue for the ranch in 2019, and while they have not been completely eradicated, the ranch said that it's been able to dramatically reduce their footprint.
"We're very, very happy to report that we've basically eroded the active area down to about a tenth of what it was," Kellerman shared.
However, the presence of little fire ants remains a real threat for the islands.
"We've started to find them in our bananas," Kellerman continued.
"It's not only defacing what we think of as historical traditional Hawai'i, but once they finish with those trees, our concern is obviously they're going to go after even more food crops."
The DLNR is encouraging residents to collect and submit ants from their properties to help track and control their populations. Free ant collection kits are available as part of the campaign.
More information about the Stop the Ant campaign can be found here.
This story aired on The Conversation on Oct. 26, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
