Our community has been offered thousands of tiny new farm workers – they’ll work 24/7… and they are paid in dung! We are talking about three species of dung beetles that have been introduced to New Zealand to improve our farm environments. Large drums at an Auckland nursery are now teeming with beetles that are ready for release in New Zealand paddocks – and the Mahia farms have been selected for a first mass release trial if we want them.
Dung beetles are everyone’s friends. They mix sheep and cow manure into the soil. Some are “tunnellers” that act like miniature bulldozers: they shove dung down tunnels that they have dug directly under the dung pat. Others are “rollers”: they shape the dung into neat balls and roll them away from the pat to bury them. And there are “dwellers”: they live entirely within the dung pat. Together they make the dung pats disappear faster and become blended into the soil profile. All the beetles feed on and lay their eggs on the dung.
If the beetles catch on and build to large enough numbers, they will:
- Help soil to build up carbon
- Create soil that can hold more water and nutrients
- Increase pasture growth and animal production
- Reduce run-off of nutrients, sediment and pathogens to help clean up the waterways
- Reduce worm transmission between stock and reduce the need for drenching.
You can think of all the hard work we have done to plant along the Whangawehi streams as a final line of defence of the waterways; whereas dung beetles head off the problems at their source – in the paddocks themselves. You can read a lot more about the beetles at https://dungbeetles.co.nz/.
A lot of research and risk assessments by independent panels has concluded that dung beetles will be safe additions to our ecosystems. They’ll stay in the paddocks, don’t eat or compete with other species already there, and probably will increase the number of our other best farm biodiversity friends – the earthworms.
Any dung beetle releases at Mahia would be a real team effort. If the farmers wants to go ahead, we would be looking for some volunteer farmers to host the first releases and to have traps set out in surrounding paddocks for two-week periods in each season. Farmers would need to adjust grazing and drenching near the time of release to give the beetles a leg-up. Manaaki Whenua (Landcare Research) are combining with Beef+Lamb’s Regenerating Hill Country project to release and monitor outcomes. Even the Aussies will help – Meat & Livestock Australia would provide the beetles free of charge and our monitoring results would be combined with theirs from the other side of the ditch so a bigger picture emerges. And the beetles themselves have been mass reared by the Dung Beetle Innovations team in Auckland.
We all want to see if the beetles take hold. We’d also like to combine it with some school exercises and some publicity to show that the farmers and community are taking action to improve the whole catchment including soil and water quality. We will keep you posted
Whangawehi Catchment Management Group 