100 years of biological control of invasive alien plants in South Africa: History, practice and achievements

On 26 June 1906, the fourth Parliamentary Select Committee on Agricultural Cooperation met in Cape Town to debate the apparently intractable scourge to agriculture, and the wider community, of dense infestations of sweet prickly pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) in the Eastern Cape and Karoo. Originating from Central America, this plant had been in South Africa since at least the 1750s, and by the 1890s had invaded an estimated 314 000 ha, which increased to about 1 million ha by the 1950s. Dr G.H. Maasdorp, a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Cape and a medical practitioner in Graaff-Reinet, which was literally in the thick of the prickly pear problem at the time, presented his perceptive views to the Committee.