EASTERN AUSTRALIA

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 59, 3 December 1919, Page 2

EASTERN AUSTRALIA

"A WASTE IN A HUNDRED YEARS" MENACE OF THE PRICKLY PEAR "Ton are fortunate in New Zealand," said Dr. It, ,T. Tillyard, M.A., B.Sc., of Sydney, N.S.W., to a Dominion roporter yesterday. "You may think that you havo a great many pests, but they are few and light compared with those wo have in Australia. Duo of tho worst is the priekjy pear, whifcli is ruining hundreds of squaro miles of territory every year in Australia. The amount of land under prickly in Queensland alono must bo as great as the North Island, and it is spreading with alarming rapidity. It is now down as far as Newcastle, and is heading for Sydney. I tell you what it is—if the pear continues its activity at' the present rate, the whole of Eastern Australia will bo a waste in a hundred years."

And what is being done to check it? "The Governments of New Soutli Wales and Queensland have combined to offer the sum of .£IO,OOO to anyone who would solve the problem, but at the latest the Governments were haggling over the n until each shpuld pay—actually liagffling, "hen the job would be worth a million! The discoverer of a proved destroyer of t'<e Opuntia prickly pear is also being offered 100,000 acres of pear. land. Thero is a known destroyer of certain varieties of nrickly pear in the South American cochineal insect, but it wilL not touch the Opuntia, and so far it has not been discovered what will. Tn the meantime' the pest inarches south. Strangely, the nrirldy pear is not a post'in its own habitat—Mexico and Peru. It only flourishes abnormally when transplanted. There are many similar instances in nature. Rabbits were not a nuisance in England—they were protected, and poachers for snaring them were transported;to Bot'iny Bay—but when rabbits were introduced to Austjjlia they became a real pest. Now they are actually becoming valuable. At one time people would not eat them—they are getting to know bettter—and the pelts are bringing good money. Still the.rabbit is a nuisance. He is so voracious a feeder that he eats as much as a sheep.