Many people may not be familiar with the harrisia cactus, but Ken Stower knows the pain its razor-sharp spines inflict all too well.
He was forced to euthanise his prized $20,000 bull after it stepped on the cactus and the thorns punctured its leg.”The spines are quite capable of going through a [four-wheel drive] tyre and if they can go through that they will quite easily go through an animal,” Mr Stower said.
“We had to euthanise him — it was difficult financially as well as mentally.”
Over the past decade he has watched the invasive weed spread across his 1,400-hectare property at Captains Mountain, 220 kilometres west of Brisbane.
“It’s gone from hundreds to thousands of plants everywhere,” Mr Stower said.A trip to hospital
Sally McKeering and her horses have been seriously injured by the plant.
“I’ve had a few really good horses that have been pretty much crippled from cactus getting in their coronet band just above their hoof,” she said.
While working on her cattle property near Alpha, more than 400km west of Rockhampton, Ms McKeering fell into a patch of harrisia.The spines pierced her glove and went into her wrist.
“Every time my hand or wrist would move, I could feel the thorns digging into me,” Ms McKeering said.
The doctors told her the thorns were so deeply embedded that she would need surgery to remove them.Costly species
The South American species was introduced to Queensland as a pot plant in the 1890s.
Birds and other animals have since spread it from Charters Towers in North Queensland to Marrar in southern New South Wales.
The numbers are difficult to pin down, but a 2021 study led by Flinders University Professor Corey Bradshaw found it was Queensland’s most costly weed since 1960.
In Queensland the management of invasive plants and animals is a responsibility shared by land managers, industry, the community and all levels of government under the Biosecurity Act 2014.
The Queensland Department of Primary Industries (QDPI) and its biosecurity arm often lead research in these areas and rely on funding from various sources, including the federal government.
It has acknowledged the cactus is not containable.
