New Zealand is the first country to wipe out invasive butterfly
Found on New Scientist on Tuesday, 29 November 2016
Before morphing into a butterfly, P. brassicae starts out as a caterpillar that feeds voraciously on brassica crops – including cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and Brussel sprouts. It can also eat New Zealand’s 79 native cress species, 57 of which are at risk of extinction.
To encourage children to join the eradication effort, the department also offered a NZ$10 bounty for every dead great white butterfly brought in during the 2013 spring school holidays.
New Zealand’s great white butterfly eradication is part of a larger scheme to remove all introduced pests. In July, the government announced that it would also wipe out all rats, stoats and possums by 2050.
With globalization, it has gotten easier for species to travel to new areas. That, and humans have been stupid enough to release species, thinking that can help fixing problems other released species cause.