Buffel: South Australia leading the way

By MIKE GILLAM

Part two in a series of four.

The insurance industry is doubtless already measuring the fire risk to regional towns and numerous isolated hamlets surrounded by a sea of buffel and with barely a garden hose at hand.

In Alice Springs flood premiums escalated sharply in response to the sale of the Government owned Territory Insurance Office (TIO) to the private sector. In an age of climate crisis and looming natural disasters this was surely an appalling decision by the previous Country Liberal Party.

Once more the citizens of Central Australia will pay dearly because of Government failure to plan for the future. To raise my own morale, I turn my vehicle south down the Stuart Highway.

South Australia’s decision to declare buffel grass a weed has received strong support from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Their September 2023 assessment report on invasive species and their control “… recognises buffel grass’s potential to completely take-over arid ecosystems, forcing out native plant and animal specie.

“The IPBES is a global science-policy body tasked with providing the best available evidence on biodiversity issues to governments and decision-makers. The assessment report was developed over more than four years by 86 experts from 49 countries, drawing on more than 13,000 scientific articles and government reports … included significant contributions from indigenous peoples and local communities, making it the most comprehensive assessment ever of invasive alien species around the world.”

Given the enormity of the environmental threat posed by buffel, efforts by the state Government of South Australia to combat the spread of this pest seem aspirational and ad hoc.

Meanwhile, buffel continues to expand, a toxic flow from the NT, into both SA and WA; surely a case for legal remedy by affected states, given government responsibility for highway management, a major conduit for its spread.

Gidyea drainages northern SA.

Spanning 50 years, I’m a regular visitor to Coober Pedy, where I spend time writing, taking photographs and drinking tea or moonshine in the company of old and new friends.

It’s my habit to leave Alice Springs in the dark so I can enjoy the pre-dawn transition. Unless budgerigar murmurations or other distractions intervene, I’m likely to reach the famous opal mining town 680 km distant, in the mid-afternoon.

With the sublime Waterhouse Ranges catching the first rays of the morning sun on my right, I pass over the once appealing Orange Creek. Involuntarily I grimace, noting the red gum woodland shows minimal recovery after an apocalyptic fire event in 2011. A decade later I’m not surprised the river still looks trashed.

A critically important field note published in 2021 by Charles Darwin University’s Christine Schlesinger & Erin Westerhuis gave a grim analysis of the impact of buffel fuelled wildfires on old growth trees. “Large old trees are keystone structures of terrestrial ecosystems that provide unique habitat resources for wildlife. Here we report on the impact of a single wildfire on large river red gums … arid riparian woodland invaded by buffel.

“In 2018, 266 trees with more than 80cm equivalent trunk diameter were mapped at six sites to provide a pre-fire baseline. Within a year the sites were impacted by a large … wildfire that burnt an area of 660 square kilometres in 15 days. Sites were resurveyed in 2019 to assess the fate of the trees … 54% of the trees exposed to the fire were destroyed and the remainder lost on average 79% of their canopy.” Fire ecology 17, Article number: 34 (2021).

Given the recent history of accelerated fire behaviour in Central Australia, it seems certain the entire red gum woodland in Schlesinger’s baseline study area will vanish after successive fires, perhaps in as little as 20 years, notwithstanding one or two isolated trees perched in the middle of a sandy river might survive longer.

South of the ranges, the country becomes progressively flatter as altitude reduces from 545m around Alice Springs to 193m above sea level at Coober Pedy and plummets to minus nine meters below sea level on the shoreline of Lake Eyre.

Over this distance the wide Eucalypt lined river channels gradually transition from thirsty red gums to hardier coolibahs ultimately replaced in the minor drainages by Acacia woodlands of gidyea, or red mulga.

I stop to drag and relocate a roadkill roo so that hungry wedge tailed eagles don’t share its fate. The view of the immediate roadside invades my thoughts. Exploiting roadside disturbance, buffel reaches out to colonise patches higher in nitrogen, notably within the leaf litter zone beneath mallees and other shady trees and shrubs.

South of Alice Springs, in “disturbed” areas routinely impacted by offroad vehicles, buffel has now encircled a great many desert oaks and I instinctively check magnificent stands on the approach to Erldunda. Predictably, roadside stops and campsites are still begging for buffel control but the desert oaks are clear for now.

Seven hundred years ago Lhere Pirnte, the ancestral Finke River flowed to Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre) but this connection became blocked as the climate turned progressively arid.

Crossing the Stuart Highway just south of Erldunda, Karinga Creek is an important palaeo-connection to a westerly chain of salt-lakes that culminate in the dramatic expanse of Lake Amadeus just north of Uluru.

Recent rain is evident in the ephemeral “wetlands” of Karinga Creek and I fly the drone in the distressing knowledge this mosaic of fringing Melaleucas, sedges, chenopods and native grasses may not prevail.

Fertilised by Government inertia and taking root in the windrows and road verge, invasive buffel grass continues its relentless march down the Stuart Highway.

From the roadside it has swept along ephemeral watercourses of the Lake Eyre Basin, choking the Marryat, Agnes and Indulkana Creeks, all three are tributaries of the Alberga River, flowing on to the Macumba and then to Lake Eyre. Clearly, in these watercourses buffel is now a major peril.

Reflecting on the value of the riparian old growth woodlands downstream, the budgerigar breeding hollows and the rich native oat grass flats beyond, positive images fade from my mind.

Budgies in northern SA

Now it’s an unfolding crime scene, because what I’ve seen of the properties in this border country, De Rose Hill and Tieyon, they seem well managed and the oat grasses, vitally important to the rich biodiversity of this area, are also vital to pastoral enterprise.

One of several rapacious invaders taking advantage of a wet La Nina, buffel has been assisted by a post Covid 19 surge of tourists travelling through the inland. With names celebrating carnage and conquest, caravans and camper vans are ruggedly engineered and detailed in steel and shiny aluminium checker plate.

Heavily sprung and appointed it’s little wonder that city refugees ignore the official rest areas, banal at best and venture hundreds of metres off road in search of amenity.

Unfortunately the convoys of campervans carry with them a lethal cargo of buffel grass seed lodged in the mud underneath mudguards, springs and chassis. The unspoiled landscapes that attract so many 4X4 tourists must bear the consequences of seeds, both good and bad that drop into wheel ruts.

Of potentially greater threat are the road upgrades; the dozing of detours and the creation of worker encampments, machinery laybys and other transgressions.

While effective cleaning of vehicles beforehand would make a difference, equally, follow up of roadside disturbance sites and spraying of any weed infestations should be a mandatory part of these “nation” building and tragically, environmentally destructive projects.

Typically, the arid region south of latitude 27 degrees is characterised by ancient and impoverished soils that are acidic, nutrient depleted and low in phosphorous.

Given the magnitude of the buffel tsunami, low rainfall (about 160mm per annum) and a corresponding high evaporation rate of 2.5 metres, is a further blessing.

These deficiencies of soils and rainfall, combined with high summer temperatures, offer strategic advantages over the MacDonnell Ranges at latitude 23 degrees.

Here in the country that is close to my heart, the Alice Springs bioregion is in a state of ecological collapse, official news from our national Government in Canberra, something that was patently obvious to most Centralian residents 15 years ago!

The spread and vigour of this subtropical grass has massively increased the intensity of wildfires leading to the calamitous loss of old growth trees and with myriad environmental, social and economic impacts.

Political awareness might finally arrive in the NT given the 2023 disaster in Hawaii where exotic grasses (a legacy of European colonisers) including buffel, fuelled devastating wildfires that resulted in a shocking toll of lives and property.

In favourable contrast, the gaunt country surrounding Coober Pedy is less than optimal for buffel expansion, not a firm geographical barrier but definitely worth acting upon.

With modest investment to combat invasive buffel grass I’m sure we can buy this country time, hell decades of it, until such time as enlightened governments and responsible corporates invest in biological control and critical land management.

South Australia provides examples of foresight, diligence and strategic actions, both novel and traditional, that are attempting to stem the spread of this terrifying pest.

Realising that buffel was following the railway line, (a corridor of ground disturbance), lateral thinking land managers set up a herbicide spray tank on a flat car at the rear of a train and proceeded to efficiently spray hundreds of kilometres of infected rail corridor.

I was given the train example in the past year but my memory has misplaced a critical detail from the hundreds of conversations that have informed the writing of this story. Sadly, I’m now unable to verify the source and confirm this innovative action actually happened.

Perhaps it’s a case of wishful thinking, whatever the case, it’s a great idea and I hope that buffel strategists will put it into practice without delay. I’ve been through the country around Tarcoola and certainly patches of buffel are evident along the railway corridor so maybe a slow trip and targeted spraying is needed right now.

The politics of buffel are accelerating in the Northern Territory, sadly outpaced by the damaging impact of buffel-fuelled fires.

In addition to the NT Government appointed buffel grass Technical Working Group (TWG), the Arid Lands Environment Centre based in Alice Springs have greatly expanded their collaboration with stake-holders and buffel campaigners across the arid zone.

Meanwhile, the NT Labor Government, a great spin factory on methods of deflecting environmental concern and neglect, has cancelled the Party’s annual conference. Is this the latest attempt by Government to control the environmental narrative?

Western myall woodland in the Kingoonya area

Failure by the NT Government over decades to declare buffel grass a weed and failure to regulate, prevent and discourage the ongoing release of other exotic species is another example of inept governance and crisis management.

Resistance to this unprecedented frenzy of land use development has unified and aligned a broad church of environmentalists with the heavily impacted Aboriginal defenders of cultural and sacred sites.

The South Australian Government has acted on the science and declared buffel a weed although the available funding fails to acknowledge the seriousness of the task and the enormous consequences of failure. Resources from the federal Government and the private sector are surely available but the will and a sense of urgency seems to be missing.

Several very prosperous mining companies, each employing environmental officers, need to step up. The private mining haul roads are potential conduits for weeds. With corporate investment, weed management on haul roads could be scaled up with employment offered to local people to map and plan strategic controls and urgently spray roadside infestations in areas beyond the mining leases.

It would be a travesty to do nothing and ignore the impacts of this subtropical grass and its many naturalising variants.

Unless we spray the roadsides diligently, buffel will enter and devastate watercourses and old growth stands across most of the inland. If it reaches the wetlands of Bon Bon reserve, a mere 180km south of Coober Pedy, conservation managers will need to quadruple budgets to hold a line which will eventually fall as ecological gem after gem succumbs to this botanical curse.

I’m gutted by the thought of buffel invading the western myall woodlands, rich in Eremophillas, Solanums and Quandongs. Emus are abundant and southern hairy nosed wombats are also present in small numbers in the ecotonal zones bordering palaeo-channels.

There are stark differences and a few similarities between the desert dwellers of the Northern Territory and South Australia. On matters of strategy and organisation the NT Government can benefit greatly from the experiences of South Australia and readily apply methods, procedures and use existing publications on buffel identification and control.

From Primary Industries and Regions (PIRSA) where policy is set, through to Department of Environment and Water (DEW) that coordinates on the ground actions by eight dedicated landscape regions and their boards, multiple departments are addressing the buffel threat.

With inadequate resources, the landscape regions have been holding the buffel line for years but expansion over recent wet years has proved overwhelming. A recent boost to funding will however see improved strategic planning and coordination with resources on the ground, including mines, road and rail that are seen as key players.

Strangely neither PIRSA or DEW have a permanent presence in Coober Pedy, a community and geographic location that seems critical in the buffel grass war.

This absence matters greatly because the District Council of Coober Pedy appears completely distracted by financial difficulties and its rapidly growing debt. Against a conspicuous backdrop of opal mining and a reputation built on dystopian stereotypes the residents of this famous opal mining town exhibit a surprising level of environmental awareness, passion and concern.

Buffel hillside east of Warburton, WA

Buffel grass action however is piecemeal, with a few dedicated locals, mostly aged over 60, keeping buffel at bay in small areas important to them. This is how it began in Alice Springs, now it’s a community wide obsession.

As I conclude this essay, the nightly news is full of fast moving grass fires in Queensland and NSW, of lives, homes and livelihoods lost. Paddocks, roadside grasses, and understorey tussocks setting trees and shrubs ablaze.

Some of these grasslands look suspicious, do they incorporate exotic species, even buffel, I wonder? Where is the federal Government in this accelerating disaster that impacts vast areas across five states and Territory’s?

Predictably, the Coober Pedy Country Fire Service are trying to recruit volunteers and from this ageing community, fire-fighters are responsible for outlying areas from Anna Creek to Mt Willoughby.

With the spread of buffel, their role will be stretched further, the difficulty of attracting volunteers more acute, the work more dangerous and increasingly futile.

PHOTO at top: Karinga Creek ephemeral wetland south of Erldunda. All photos by MIKE GILLAM.

Essays about buffel by MIKE GILLAM

ESSAY THREE Privatise the buffel profits, socialise the costs

ESSAY TWO Buffel: South Australia leading the way

ESSAY ONE From grass castles to fiery ruins