Beetles To Kill Beetles
While the Colorado beetle is being hunted and destroyed in the potato fields of Europe, another beetle—also from North America—is being imported into South Africa to help root out the prickly pear pest. This beetle’s name is the cactophagus, and its home is in Mexico. Black, with faint orange stripes on its back, it lives on the spring leaves of the prickly pear plant, which since it was first brought to South Africa has over-run vast tracts of the karroo and the Cape coastal belt, destroying the natural vegetation and making the land utterly impossible to farm.
The cochineal insect helped to rid much of the karroo of its prickly pear, but this was, in turn, attacked by natural enemies. So now reinforcements of 8000 cactophagus are being rushed across the Atlantic to begin an all-out attack on the prickly pear.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BPB19490207.2.31
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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 50, 7 February 1949, Page 5
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145Beetles To Kill Beetles Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 50, 7 February 1949, Page 5
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