The Australian Plague Locust Commission (APLC) is a division of the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, created in 1974 to manage outbreaks of the Australian plague locust, spur-throated locust and migratory locust in eastern Australia. With 19 staff members at its headquarters in Canberra and field offices in Narromine, Broken Hill and Longreach, the Commission is funded half by the Commonwealth government and half by the Australian states of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland.
The APLC conducts regular surveys of locust populations and migrations and carries out control of locust outbreaks by means of aerial application of pesticides; traditionally these were chemicals, but more recently APLC has been a major contributor to the development of a biological pesticide in collaboration with CSIRO and LUBILOSA scientists. With CSIRO, it also conducts educational outreach and training courses for landowners, businesses, and local governments, including international consulting work in China, Africa and South America.
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“Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work—the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.”
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“A plague o’ both your houses.
They have made worms’ meat of me.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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