AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- New Zealand says it will try a novel solution for dealing with massive amounts of livestock dung generated in the country -- imported dung beetles.

Adult dung beetles lay their eggs in manure, which the insects feed on after hatching and break down into sawdust, and a mound of dung inhabited by beetles can disappear in 48 hours, compared with a month for a mound that is left out in a field, NewScientist.com reported Friday.


The difference may seem unimportant, but not in a country with a cattle population as large as New Zealand, scientists say.

As the manure mounds rot, they release greenhouse gases, accounting for around 14 percent of New Zealand's emissions of nitrous oxide, a problem the beetles could solve, researchers say.

Dung beetles that can handle cattle dung are not native to New Zealand, so they will have to be imported, as Australia did in the 1960s when it introduced some from Europe and Africa.

"They've been hugely successful," Shaun Forgie of Landcare Research in Auckland, New Zealand, said.