Tim the Yowie Man discovers an unassuming garage hiding a unique operation housing 40,000 dung beetles, described as "little nuggets of black gold" for their environmental benefits.
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00:00Down there, in a garage in suburban Canberra, is the nerve centre of John Theon's National
00:07Dung Beetle Distribution Operation.
00:10Now, John is currently packing boxes of live Bubas Bison, an introduced species which is
00:18well suited to the cold and wet winters of South Eastern Australia.
00:27That is the male.
00:28The males have a big ridge on their forehead and a couple of horns on the front of their
00:35face.
00:36And this is the female without any horns at all.
00:40In fact, you can very easily age the female by looking at the spurs on those front legs.
00:49The females do all the digging, all the hard work in the dung beetle kingdom.
00:55And if that female has dug 20 tunnels down through hard, compacted soil, those little
01:04spurs are worn off and rounded, just as the spikes on a backhoe shovel would be if it
01:12was used a great deal.
01:14So we can actually age the beetles quite accurately.
01:17So this is a young female.
01:20It's full of eggs and ready to lay eggs the night they're released in the farmer's
01:25paddocks.
01:26The farmers readily buy the beetles because 1,050 beetles of this species, Bubas Bison,
01:34is around about the same price as one single tonne of phosphate fertiliser.
01:41And the farmer will eventually get 1,000 times greater benefit out of these beetles than
01:49he would from one single tonne of phosphate fertiliser.
01:53And then a farmer has to redo the fertiliser again in a few years' time, whereas if a farmer
01:59uses the correct drenches with these beetles, he will never have to use or import this species
02:06again on his farm.
02:08The beetles will be on the farm for the grandkids.
02:11It's a one-off operation.
02:16Every cow in the country drops 12 cow pads per day.
02:22Now we have 29 million head of cattle in the country, and would you believe they drop
02:27almost half a million tonnes of cow dung a day.
02:31We're bringing phosphate fertilisers from Florida, Russia, China, Morocco, to Australia.
02:39And here we have a very valuable product already on the farm.
02:44It's already in the paddock, but when it sits on top of the ground, it pollutes the paddocks.
02:49The nitrogen in the dung goes off into the atmosphere.
02:53Bush flies breed in the dung, buffalo fly breed in the northern part, which is the scourge
02:58of the cattle industry in northern Australia.
03:01Simply by burying the dung in one, two or three days, we can avoid the pollution of
03:08the paddock, we can put the nitrogen in the dung back into the grass root zone, there's
03:13more oxygen getting into the soil through the tunnel system.
03:17The habitat and food supply attracts earthworms.
03:20The bush fly can't breed.
03:22In fact, here in Canberra, people that eat outdoors in the summertime should be very
03:27grateful for the dung beetles, because 30 odd years ago, it was actually illegal for
03:32a restaurant to put a table outdoors and serve any food whatsoever outdoors.
03:38The reason for it being illegal was that 200 bush flies would descend on whatever you were
03:43attempting to eat, and the health department considered that a health hazard, consequently
03:48they banned eating outdoors completely.
03:52And just look what's happening now.
03:53We can eat outdoors just as people do in London, Paris and New York, and it's all because of
03:59these dung beetles.
04:04There are about 1,050 beetles there.
04:08These now get put into the Canadian peat moss that's come in through the quarantine system.
04:20So there are 1,050 beetles in that box, ready to go to their new home and new location.
04:27By the way, I like pointing out, they've been showered, hair combed and teeth cleaned.
04:34And then the beetles and the container go into the Post Office, express Post Office
04:39box and taken down to the Dickson Post Office.
04:44When I have all 24 species of dung beetles distributed around the country, I hope one
04:51day that we will be able to produce two blades of grass where one once grew.
04:59That's my ultimate aim.
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