This little monster is a dung beetle.Enhance any photo by clicking on it. Good news for the school strikersToday, Friday 24 May 2019, children all over the world are striking from school in another protest against adult inaction over climate change. Probably few of them know that the earthy dung beetle may well be helping their ultimate cause. Dung beetles tunnel down, then bury pooh in the ground, eat pooh, breed in pooh, and generally clean up afterthemselves. Whenever a cow dumps a great pat on the ground, the dung beetles fly in and go to work. And here's the great news! Whenever they do that, recent research shows, they may be significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. One beetle may look nothing but what about scores of them at work? The Greater Wellington Council does good - maybe more than it knows I live in New Zealand's capital city, Wellington. The name 'Wellington' is also regional. The Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) covers most of the southern part of the North Island. Water is one of its responsibilities. Many New Zealand rivers are polluted (see my post 3 March 2019) frequently by farm run off, so GWRC, watershed by watershed, is trying to improve the water quality. One method of attack is dung beetles. Below is part of their press release late last year. A natural answer'Dung beetles are a natural answer to rebalancing the environmental impact of livestock. They tunnel through soil and bury livestock dung, which aerates soil, improves the nutrient cycle and helps manage water absorption and dispersion. The result is improved water quality, more available grazing pasture, decreased maintenance time, improved soil health, and parasite and pest reduction. Dung beetle use is approved by the Government and the Environmental Protection Authority. ' Imports New Zealand has dung beetle populations – 15 species in all - but they are highly specialized, and live in native bush. They don't fit with the dung of big pasture animals like sheep and cattle. So those used in pasture improvement here are all imported – 11 species. There are thousands of dung beetle species around the world and they fall into three main types: dwellers (live in the dung), rollers and tunnellers. Tunnellers are used in the New Zealand scene. How dung-burying beetles workBeetle images and chart provided by Dr Shaun Forgie Entomologist's opinion
A scholarly publication, Scientific Reports, January 8 2016 said this about that research 'Several recent papers suggest that dung beetles may affect fluxes of GHGs from cattle farming. Here, we put these previous findings into context. Using Finland as an example, we assessed GHG emissions at three scales: the dung pat, pasture ecosystem, and whole lifecycle of milk or beef production. At the first two levels, dung beetles reduced GHG emissions by up to 7% and 12% respectively, mainly through large reductions in methane (CH4) emissions.' Dr Forgie points out that these finding are from northen Findland, a cold climate, very different from that in New Zealand. The 11 types of beetles used here are different from those in Finland. Our tunnellers are likely to have higher methane reductions than those in cold Finland. Forgie additionally points out that dung beetle activity results in organic carbon capture – a good thing for climate change reduction. Certainty?More world wide research, needs to be done, but, as more and more dung beetles are released to work on the cow pats in New Zealand and similar temperate locations worldwide, maybe we'll be able to say with certainty that dung beetles are making a significant contribution to reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Meanwhile, let's hope so. ########## John McInnes Friday 24 May 2019 (Apologies for late posting. Computer breakdown Thursday 23) References: Scientific Reports, January 2016 Dung Beetle Innovations Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) press release dung beetles -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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