At that time, in order to control blooms and algae, the United States introduced carp from Southeast Asia, and Australia spent a lot of money to introduce a large number of red foxes in order to control the wild rabbits that flooded everywhere, which is some common biological treatment methods.
However, in Australia, there is a more special phenomenon that you have not heard of, that is, the ubiquitous animal excrement, almost plagued Australians for half a century, trapped by, Australians have to spend a lot of money every year to import the champion from abroad - shell lang.
Why is Australia trapped in?
We know that Australia has a well-known title of "riding on the back of a sheep" in the world, which shows that its animal husbandry industry is very developed.
But what is less known is that cattle and sheep and other livestock are not native to Australia, the earliest living in this land is a group of bags similar to koalas, kangaroos and other bagged creatures, for these pocket creatures, cattle and sheep gods are pure uninvited guests, is a species invasion.
All of this originated from the colonizers of Europe.
Around 1770, a British navigator named Cook was the first to discover Australia and shamelessly planted the British flag, and Australia became a British overseas colony.
Don't look at Australia surrounded by the sea, but its tropical desert and savannah climate is dominated, occupying nearly 20% of the entire continent area of the central desert and less enthusiastic climatic conditions to leave a very bad impression on the British who come from afar, in their eyes, Australia is a place ignored by God, if there is any value, it is the most suitable place to exile prisoners here.
Until the 1850s, the first European colonists to come to this land found a lot of gold mines in the local area, this groundbreaking news did not go away, and soon crossed the ocean to Europe, which was undoubtedly a thunder for those gold panning enthusiasts in Europe, more and more people came to Australia, and the desolate land was also lively.
After the swarms of people came here, the first thing to solve was their own eating and drinking problems, and Australia at that time did not have much food that could provoke the taste buds of this group of European people, so in the 1880s, the British introduced cattle and sheep native to Europe to Australia.
In addition to the world's largest tropical desert area, Australia is also the world's most extensive natural grassland area of the country, alfalfa, perennial ryegrass and red and white three-leaf and other high-quality forage is very conducive to the breeding of livestock and the development of animal husbandry.
Watching the growing of the cattle and sheep herd, the shepherds showed a motherly smile with coffee, and the high-quality pasture cultivated high-quality beef and mutton.
Moreover, because these cattle and sheep groups will be subject to the control of their farmers, they will not grow in disorder, and these cattle and sheep raised in Australia will not cause greater damage to the local ecology than the hares that later flooded in Australia.
However, a more real problem arose: around the middle of the 20th century, Australia's livestock industry had reached a high scale, on average, each Australian owned 5 sheep and 1.48 cattle, but to the surprise of herders, these cattle and sheep could discharge about 80 million tons of manure per year.
In general, animal excrement includes three-quarters of the water and a quarter of the solids, and these solids can be decomposed into organic matter in more detail, organic matter can be degraded with the participation of microorganisms, in addition to they can also be used as the most valuable organic fertilizer, it is reasonable that the excrement of these animals is not enough to attract the attention and distress of Australians.
But the fact is that nature's ability to degrade waste is very limited, but also need a certain amount of time, and Australia is too large cattle and sheep population, the daily excretion of feces is too amazing, this part of the feces is still in this decomposition cycle, followed by new cattle and sheep excrement, while entering another decomposition cycle, the so-called "wave of uneven, a wave of rising".
The grassland is full of feces, making people feel that the diaphragm should be counted, and these cattle and sheep are very picky eaters, where the feces are located, there is a disgusting smell around them, affecting the mood and experience of the cattle and sheep "eating".
Cattle and sheep often take the initiative to avoid these places and choose to go to clean grasslands to forage, that is, grasslands with more concentrated manure have almost lost their basic function of grazing.
These ubiquitous feces are like the algae in the United States and the Canadian black geese in New Zealand, causing great damage to the local ecological environment, and also breeding a large number of flies known as one of the "four pests".
According to local scientists, a pile of manure from a cow hatches about 3,000 larvae in two weeks, but we should be clear that a cow or sheep cannot be excreted only once a day.
If you calculate it 10 times, and then synthesize so many cattle and sheep, the flies that fly out of the grassland every day should be calculated in hundreds of millions, and these flies are not only disturbed by their unethical behavior and spawning everywhere, but also may bring a large number of infectious diseases.
Imagine a scene where a shepherd has just brought out a cup of carefully refined coffee, originally wanted to lie on the Taishi chair at the door to enjoy the sunset, who expected that the stench of cattle and sheep excrement accompanied by the breeze came to the face, and the swarms of flies were ecstatic, circling around the shepherd's coffee in a drunken circle, and some "lucky stars" had even become the objects in the cup.
I believe that such a scene is unacceptable to anyone, let alone those rich and rich shepherds with one acre and three points of land?
Desperately determined to solve this thorny problem, the intolerable Australians pondered and finally focused on a beetle, the dung beetle known as the fecal buster.
In 1965, Australia announced the establishment of the dung beetle project, decided to select and introduce suitable dung beetle species from abroad to eliminate the domestic disgusting animal excrement, because these newcomers, crossed the sea dung beetles across the sea still have a certain discomfort to Australia's geographical environment, so the number of dung beetles that can survive after the introduction is not very large, so Australia needs to spend a lot of money every year to continue to introduce dung beetles abroad to maintain its normal proportion.
The dung beetle mentioned here is the shell lang often mentioned in our lives, the name dung beetle is more professional and more academic, and shell lang is the name that people summarize according to the living habits of this insect, on the earth, it is really difficult to find out that other organisms can bear the responsibility of eliminating feces more than the shell lang.
It's strange, isn't there a shell lang in a country so big as Australia? Why is it necessary to introduce this organism abroad?
Strangely, Australia not only has a shell lang and a lot of varieties, the biggest highlight of the shell lang this creature is not to pick a place, there is no harsh requirements for the environment, a lifetime only dedicated to one thing, that is, feces, as long as there is feces where there is, it is the paradise of shell lang.
There are generally three ways to treat feces:
The first is to dig a tunnel directly under the feces, and then through this tunnel to remove the feces, followed by rolling the feces into a round ball and eventually transporting it to the ground, the second method is the most common, and the third method is mainly relative to the more lazy shell langs, they will directly build nests on the feces to lay eggs.
Although the third way is easy and convenient, the shell lang itself is easily abused by nature, and in order to survive and reproduce offspring, most of the shell lang will not choose the third method.
Only a small part of the feces carried away by the shell lang is directly eliminated by the shell lang, and most of it will be buried in the ground, thus becoming the nourishment for plant growth.
There are about 7,000 kinds of dung beetle species in the world, of which Australia, known as the "World Living Fossil Museum", has more than 500 species, from deserts to grasslands, from mountains to depressions, as long as you observe carefully, you can see their busy figures, but the shell lang has more stringent requirements for his own feces.
Not all shell lang has a strong interest in all feces, just like foodies can't have the most primitive obsession with all the food in the world, the native shell lang living in Australia, with the local marsupial such as koalas, kangaroos and other creatures have been coordinated for tens of thousands of years, and have long been accustomed to enjoying the hard and dry excrement of these creatures.
And cattle and sheep belong to exotic species, their status in Australia may not be recognized by the original shell lang, and the cow and sheep feces have more water content, the local shell lang wants to roll a ball to exhaust the strength of the tiger, sometimes can not roll up at all, a day down, the work is not done, but also stained with a body of, just like did not eat lamb, but also provoked a smell of fat, that also roll a ball!
Who doesn't get angry about this? Moreover, these local shell langs are not very interested in cattle and sheep manure itself, so in the face of the mountain of cow and sheep manure, the local shell lang chooses to strike collectively, just as always, the handling and digestion of kangaroo or koala manure.
The laws of nature cannot be tampered with, and in the face of local shell langs who do not obey the handling orders, Australia has no choice but to spend a lot of money to introduce different varieties of shells in other regions, but this introduction project must also meet two conditions at the same time:
On the one hand, the introduced shell lang must be interested in cow and sheep manure and be able to carry this manure, and on the other hand, they can adapt to the natural environment of Australia.
Australians think about it, jump around, and finally found a suitable breed for introduction in South Africa, the climate conditions in South Africa are very similar to Australia, but there are more than 800 kinds of shell lang breeds, and finally Australians selected more than 40 kinds of shell lang who understand the habits of cattle and sheep and are more interested in their feces to bring back to China, for these inconspicuous little creatures, I can't imagine that they will one day become valuable things.
There is a demand for the market, by about 1500 shell lang composed of the original population, about 400 US dollars, encounter a better quality may be more expensive, Australia will bring these populations back to the country for breeding and breeding, unfortunately the survival rate of these shell lang is not too high, after all, it is a guest from other places, and it is a cross-ocean, boat and car labor, every 100 shells only about 2 to 3 can survive.
In order to maintain a sufficient number of shells on the farm, these herders need to continue to bring in and replenish them for a long time every year, but there is no better solution to this.
Developed animal husbandry for Australia contributes a large proportion of GDP, but Australians also need to pay for the destruction of the ecological environment, between each other, can be described as a loss, a prosperity, today's Australians have not completely solved the problem of "dung" trapped, just find a way to stop the loss in time, what will happen in the future? We don't know.