Australia's Cactus Attack

#Geography #Australia #Cactus
In the early 1900s, Australia was in the grips of a cactus epidemic. The prickly pear cactus was covering an area the size of the Great Britain, or the state of Oregon. Farms were strangled and other plants crushed beneath the weight of a sea of thorny cladodes.
Until the Cactoblastis cactorum moth, another introduced species, miraculously destroyed most of the cactus in less than a decade.
This is a fascinating story of introduced speceies, poison guns, and before-and-after photos!

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Credits
Almost all black and white/sepia photos are from the Album of Prickly Pear Photographs, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Australia.
These photos are out of copyright and available here:
http://hdl.handle.net/10462/eadarc/7410

A few photos are from the collection of Margaret Cameron and Cole family collection - used with permission (many thanks for help with researching and source material!)
In particular the photos of:
Prickly pear poison
Second colour photo of Cactoblastis in cactus
Man delivering cacti with horse and cart
Man and woman by Cactoblastis breeding enclosure
Farmers waiting for egg delivery
Cactoblastis Monument Chinchilla

Photo of Dalby memorial courtesy of John Huth (via Memorials Australia, used with permission)
Photo of Boonarga Hall - Queensland Heritage Register CCBY 3.0
Photos of tree pears and Wardian cases from The Progress of Biological Control of Prickly Pear In Australia, Dodd, 1929 (out of copyright)
First colour photo of Cactoblastis in cactus CSIRO CCBY 3.0
Cane toad image CSIRO CCBY 3.0

Below photos attributed to listed photographers, and sourced from Flickr:
Photo of very spiny prickly pear with fruits and yellow flower: NH53 CCBY 2.0
Photo of prickly pear fruits: Ken Bosma CCBY 2.0
Photo of crushed cochineal: Katja Schulz CCBY 2.0
Photo of cochineal on cactus: Mad Ball CCBY 2.0
Colour photo of prickly pear in Australia: John Tann CCBY 2.0

Sources
Lots of great info on the State Library of Queensland website - start here:
https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/green...

Alan Dodd sources from Commonwealth Prickly Pear Board available here:
https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-52813806/v...
https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-52813806/v...

More info on the spread:
https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-...

Nature article from 1926(!):
https://www.nature.com/articles/11762...

About how Cactoblastis sense Opuntia (using CO2 and other compounds):
https://academic.oup.com/chemse/artic...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4220967?...

And more overview of the cactus in Australia:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/215199?s...


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