The larvae then burrow into the plant to feed on the interior-they can destroy an entire plant within weeks. NativeВ to Argentina, these moths lay their eggs on the prickly pear plant. After the war, an experimental station known as the Bug Farm was set up in Chinchilla, Australia, to work on the solution.Д®nter our hero: a South American supermoth with the scientific name Cactoblastis cactorum. But the outbreak of World War IВ put their testing of these solutions on hold. The commission identified a number of natural controls in these areas, including insects and fungal diseases. A team of biologists visited North and South America where the plant is indigenous. In 1913, the Prickly Pear Travelling Commission was formed to search for an answer. By the 1920s, 400,000 hectares of land was being lost every year. Various methods were tested, including the use of toxic chemicals such as sulphuric acid and arsenic, but nothing was effective. In 1901, Queensland offered a cash reward to anyone who could find an effective solution to the prickly pear problem. It was one of the worldвЂ™s greatest biological invasions. By 1920, prickly pear had infested over 24 million hectares of land-an area larger than the land mass of the United Kingdom. The plants created dense thickets which left the land it covered unusable. Various other varieties of the plant were subsequently introduced which thrived and soon ran wild. The prickly pear plant was first introduced to Australia by the colonists of the First Fleet in 1788. This Cactoblastis Memorial Cairn located in Dalby, Australia, commemorates the triumph of a moth over the mass infestation of the prickly pear plant in Australia.

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