CANE TOADS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 160

In scenes showing the activities of the Kimberley Toad Busters, for example,
animal-eye-view shots of toads apparently watching on as members of their species
are killed are used by Lewis to suggest that this is reminiscent of a toad holocaust.
This might seem like cinematic hubris or blatant anthropomorphism, were it not
for the overlapping narratives of the interviews that follow. In these interviews,
Lewis alternately emphasises the absolute futility of killing adult cane toads and the
desire, expressed by many different interviewees, to turn back the clock and reverse
the devastating ecological impacts the toads have caused. Wildlife conservationist
Dr Bill Freeland, for instance, debunks the idea that the actions of the Toad Busters
are in any way effective: 'The invasion is going to go on, they are not going to
stop it, they are actually wasting their time. They can't stop it, it's simply practically
impossible'; while former Mayor of Katherine, Jim Forscutt, bemoans the lack of
resources to battle toads: 'The federal government is giving six and half million
dollars to save the whales, what about helping their own country [to] eradicate
these blasted animals?'
In a later remark, Freeland reflects on the position of cane toads, inverting the
idea that they are alien invaders: 'It's not the toad's fault that it came to Australia
and caused the death of animals. It's our fault we brought the toads here. To them
it's an alien country with alien animals and we're the cause.' Through this
'creaturely poetics', to use Anat Pick's term, Lewis invites us to explore the
ethics of our own lives and the political dimensions of ecology. For Pick, humans
and other animals are united by living bodies that are 'material, temporal and
vulnerable' (2011: 5). This shared vulnerability opens up a means of moving
beyond an anthropocentric perspective. Read through this prism, vulnerability
can be understood as a key theme in Mark Lewis's cane toad films, extending
out from the bodies of its human and cane toad subjects to encompass the broader
vulnerabilities of scientific knowledge and forms of ecological control. By stick-
ing closely to the cane toad, the film manages to document a multiplicity of rela-
tions and effects. Lewis demonstrates that it is possible to understand cane toads
from both an animal-centric perspective (one that does not reduce them to a
caricature of human behaviour, and takes note of their suffering) while still
attending to broader political concerns about invasive species, ecosystems and their
residents.
Using strategies such as the subtle undermining of scientific expertise and the
creation of animal-eye-view shots, Lewis deliberately subverts the hallowed
conventions of science and wildlife documentaries. By refusing to privilege any
one perspective over another, letting the often-contradictory views of, for example,
scientists and farmers sit side-by-side, he illuminates the complexity of the politics
surrounding invasive species, raising profound questions about the political
dimensions of both science and nature. His films present an alternate world, not
often represented in science and wildlife documentaries, but much like our own,
in which science merges with agriculture, local government and pet keeping. In
other words, his films perform science as a product of culture. 15 At the same time,
his vision of nature stretches far beyond the vision of pristine, untouched