THORNY PROBLEMS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 129

Prickle bushes were not the object of concern for these pastoralists. One declared
that it was futile to focus on eradicating prickly acacias in conventional ways
because it would effectively mean wearing 'a chemical company's hat and advertise
for someone who takes all your profits'; the companies were only interested in
'selling a farmer a chemical so that he can go and poison prickly bushes for the next
hundred years and still not beat 'em' (Pastoralist J, interviews, 2007). A few had
taken a different approach to managing prickle bush in grazing areas by bringing
cattle and camels together for cell-grazing. Camels, also a legacy of outback frontier
settlement and bigoted White Australia policy (Baker, 1964; de Lepervanche, 1984;
Stevens, 1989), 5 have been classified as feral by government agencies and routinely
targeted for mass culling in the Outback areas where they were released during the
1920s and 1930s (Rangan and Kull, 2010, see also Chapter 2 in this volume). These
pastoralists have succeeded in using the camels on their properties to graze with
cattle. Camels prefer browsing on prickle bushes and break down the hard seeds
far more thoroughly in their digestive system than cattle. The pastoralists claim that
this co-grazing technique combined with cell-grazing has proved more effective
in maintaining good pastures with less-dense clumps of prickle bushes and has
produced healthy cattle (Pastoralists JL, JW, TL, interviews, 2007; Phillips et al .,
2001; Dörges and Heucke, 2003).
The approach adopted by these 'strategic' pastoralists is to begin by accepting
the landscape for what it is and working with it to make it healthy. They believe
their techniques require a greater understanding of the dynamic environmental and
ecological conditions of interactions between animals, grass, bush, and soil on their
land and a perspective that focuses on 'doing right by country' rather than 'battling'
the land or prickle bushes or camels or any other 'invasive' species. They feel this
has given them greater confidence for remaining profitable in the pastoral industry.
Conclusion
Pastoralism and prickly acacia have co-evolved in the landscapes of northwest
Queensland. Both were introduced, were not native to the region. The shade and
fodder offered by the prickly acacia in the first half of the twentieth century
increased the viability of the landscape for sheep and helped pastoralists remain
profitable. As pastoralism evolved from sheep to cattle, so did the landscape, along
with prickle bushes. The shift to industrial pastoralism has increased the pressure
on family-run pastoral businesses to operate with the same technological capacity
as large-scale agribusiness companies, and pastoralists have responded in different
ways to these pressures. Few feel that eradicating prickle bushes can solve all the
other problems they face in remaining profitable in the industry. Since we did our
fieldwork, repeated flooding during the wet season over the past five years in
northwest Queensland has, without doubt, created extremely favourable conditions
for prickle bush to expand. 'Battling' this expansion on a similar scale is something
that few family-run pastoral businesses can afford to take on. The shifting global
economic geography of the beef industry also imbues family-run pastoral businesses