THE AUSTRALIA N DUNG BEETLE story is largely attributable to a successfully orchestrated and thoroughly researched biological solution to an imported problem. It was Australia's good fortune that George Bornemissza arrived from Hungary when he did, and was able to prove the practicality and efficacy of dung beetles. He ran against the trend of the post-war tendency to reach for quick, cheap and apparently effective solutions. Dung beetles, despite proving themselves to be relatively adaptable little transformers of the earth, were unable to keep up with the excitement of a world in which it was possible simply to sprinkle an almost magical dust known as DDT (dichloro-diphenyltrichloroethane) to end the life of an unwanted insect. With a limited understanding of how the natural world functioned, most insects were seen as problematic; differentiating between beneficial insects and harmful ones was not particularly high on the list of concerns of farmers driven to produce ever-increasing volumes of food.

The world at the end of the Second World War was a dismal time for insects: the myriad species of useful insects suffered as much as the few detrimental ones because DDT and the other new poisons did not differentiate between them. DDT is a member of the chlorinated hydrocarbon group. It was first synthesized in 1874, but its effectiveness as a pesticide was discovered only in 1939. During the Second World War, it was used for everything from delousing prisoners to controlling malaria. It was inevitable that following that war, DDT was regarded as the new wonder solution to insect pests. It was cheap, versatile, initially very effective and its residues kept the pests away for an extended period. Looking at only one country's consumption of DDT gives an idea of the scale of its usage. Up until 1972, approximately 1 350 000 000 pounds (or 675 000 tons) of DDT were used in the US, making it one of the most widely used pesticides in that country.

Biological control compared to DDT was simply too slow, but then an odd development gave the users of DDT and other pesticides pause. Farmers started to notice a resurgence in the numbers of pests where they had been spraying, accompanied by the worrying appearance of new pests that had never previously been present.