Cactoblastis Memorial Cairn – Boonarga, Australia & More News Here

This Cactoblastis Memorial Cairn positioned in Dalby, Australia, commemorates the triumph of a moth over the mass infestation of the prickly pear plant in Australia.

The prickly pear plant was first launched to Australia by the colonists of the First Fleet in 1788. Various different forms of the plant had been subsequently launched which thrived and shortly ran wild. The crops created dense thickets which left the land it coated unusable. By 1920, prickly pear had infested over 24 million hectares of land—an space bigger than the land mass of the United Kingdom. It was one of many world’s best organic invasions.

In 1901, Queensland provided a money reward to anybody who may discover an efficient resolution to the prickly pear drawback. Various strategies had been examined, together with using poisonous chemical substances similar to sulphuric acid and arsenic, however nothing was efficient. By the Nineteen Twenties, 400,000 hectares of land was being misplaced yearly. 

In 1913, the Prickly Pear Travelling Commission was shaped to seek for a solution. A group of biologists visited North and South America the place the plant is indigenous. The fee recognized a variety of pure controls in these areas, together with bugs and fungal illnesses. But the outbreak of World War I put their testing of those options on maintain. After the struggle, an experimental station often called the Bug Farm was arrange in Chinchilla, Australia, to work on the answer. 

Enter our hero: a South American supermoth with the scientific title Cactoblastis cactorum. Native to Argentina, these moths lay their eggs on the prickly pear plant. The larvae then burrow into the plant to feed on the inside—they will destroy a whole plant inside weeks.

In 1925, a small variety of Cactoblastis moth eggs had been imported from South America. After biologists had noticed the moths’ feeding habits to make sure they wouldn’t assault crops aside from the prickly pear, the primary moths had been launched into the wild in 1926.  Millions of eggs had been distributed all through prickly-pear-infested areas, adopted by an additional 2.2 billion between 1927 and 1931.  

The outcomes had been astonishing. By 1932, the moth larvae had destroyed many of the pricky pear opening up virtually 7 million hectares of uninhabitable and deserted land. Within 10 years, the bugs had destroyed all of the dense plenty of prickly pear. While prickly pear has not been absolutely eradicated from Australia, it’s nowhere close to as dominant because it was within the Nineteen Twenties.

The management of prickly pear by the Cactoblastis moth stays one of many world’s most profitable examples of organic management. As a tribute to the success of this system, the Cactoblastis Memorial Hall was constructed close to Chinchilla, Australia in 1936.