<P> The Australian Dung Beetle Project (1965--1985), conceived and led by Dr George Bornemissza of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), was an international scientific research and biological control project with the primary goal to control the polluting effects of cattle dung . </P> <P> Upon his arrival to Australia from Hungary in 1951, Dr Bornemissza, an entomologist and ecologist, noted that Australian farmland was covered in a large number of cattle dung pads . This was in contrast to the fields of Europe where the dung was removed and recycled back into the soil by various species of dung beetle (coprids). Native Australian species of beetle had co-evolved alongside marsupials such as the kangaroo and wombat, which produce small, hard, dry and fibrous pellets of dung . Cattle were relatively recently introduced to Australia by European settlers in the 1880s and produce large, soft, moist dung pads . Native beetles, with a few exceptions, are not adapted to utilise this type of dung as a food source or breeding ground and so without such fauna, the dung pads remain on the pasture and take months or even years to decompose . Cattle will not feed from the area of rank pasture surrounding the dung pad, and with the large quantity of dung produced (up to 12 pads per animal per day), this reduces the area of land available for cattle grazing by as much as 200,000 hectares (2,000 km) per year . Cattle dung is also a primary breeding ground for several pestilent species of fly and parasitic worm . Bornemissza suggested in 1960 that the introduction to Australia of foreign dung beetle species, which had co-evolved alongside bovines and large herbivores, would be beneficial in removing the dung, thus improving cattle grazing and nutrient recycling and reducing the number of flies and worms . </P>

When was the dung beetle introduced to australia