THORNY PROBLEMS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 130

with a greater sense of uncertainty regarding their futures. They realise that, just as
happened with the wool industry during the first half of the twentieth century,
fluctuations or collapses in global commodity prices for beef may well require them
to reorient their businesses to some other land-based activity. Under such
conditions of uncertainty, the best strategy, as some pastoralists have shown, is to
focus on understanding the dynamic landscape and its varied biological components
and processes so as to keep the 'asset base' in healthy condition.
Our chapter also points to a gradual change occurring in the native and alien
species debate in Australia. The 'strategic' pastoralists demonstrate a marked
paradigm shift in refusing to buy into the labelling of 'good' and 'bad' plant species,
native or non-native. Among those involved in invasive species debates within both
academic and policy circles, there is greater awareness of the substantial critique of
the concepts and metaphors used in invasion biology from both within and outside
the discipline (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2001; Subramaniam, 2001; Larson, 2005;
Davis, 2009; Davis et al ., 2011). Concepts of 'novel' and 'hybrid' ecosystems
(Hobbs et al ., 2006; Smith et al ., 2006; Davis, 2009) have given rise to discussions
of how dynamic urban and range ecologies might be managed for greater
biodiversity. However, the ways in which these new theories are adapted to policy
will require a renegotiation of the nationalist narratives of landscape, particularly
in Australia and other settler-immigrant nations. There will always be pressure to
articulate policies in terms of 'biosecurity' and the threat of 'aliens' landing from
foreign shores. Instead of acknowledging that ecologies and landscapes change in
relation to economic shifts and socio-cultural values, these policies are likely to
blame particular biological species for causing problems and target them for
eradication.
There is also a subtle, yet profound, change in sensibility taking place among
some of the pastoralists towards land. The government's reconfiguration of
Landcare programs under the slogan 'Caring for Our Country' has, to some extent,
drawn attention to the tensions arising from bringing particular notions of 'care'
and 'country' together. The 'battler' narrative sits awkwardly within this con-
ceptualisation and many pastoralists questioned it in different ways as they reflected
on ways of looking after their properties and making a living from pastoralism in
the future. They were less concerned about land 'care' and its multiple
philosophical meanings and more about 'doing right by country'. The expression
'doing right' signals a sense of respect and duty towards someone else, in this case
towards 'country', without reference to possession. Their use of 'country' in the
Aboriginal English sense of the term may well lead to new pastoral and Outback
landscapes that reflect the sensibility of 'doing right by country'.
Acknowledgements
We thank the Australian Research Council for funding this research, which was
part of a larger project entitled, 'Acacia exchanges around the Indian Ocean'
(DP0666131), led by Christian Kull and Priya Rangan, and provided scholarship