REMAKING WETLANDS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 215

14
REMAKING WETLANDS
Rice fields and ducks in the
Murrumbidgee River region, NSW
Emily O'Gorman
In 1932, James Roy Kinghorn, a zoologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney,
published the results of his investigation into whether ducks damaged rice crops in
the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA), a farming settlement that drew water
from the Murrumbidgee River in inland NSW (Figure 14.1). He began by
explaining the background to this research, which focused on two rice seasons, in
the summers of 1926-1927 and 1927-1928. During these years, widespread
drought conditions had attracted 'thousands of wild ducks and other waterfowl'
(1932: 603) to the region. In the first of these seasons, some growers blamed their
reduced crop on duck damage, arguing 'that both the black duck and the grey teal
ate the freshly sown seed and sprouting plants, puddled the bays (thus interfering
with the young plants), and later destroyed the rice when it was in head'. 1 The
drought continued into the following rice season and the ducks stayed. Fearing
more damage, a group of farmers attempted 'to have the names of several species
of ducks removed from the list of protected birds' during an enforced closed season
so that they could be hunted as pests. However, other farmers claimed that the
ducks had done almost no damage and in fact helped their farming by eating weeds
in the rice bays. Because of this 'contradictory evidence, and as there was no
information available as to the economic value of wild ducks in regard to rice
cultivation', Kinghorn was 'asked to investigate'. He initially tried to undertake
this research from Sydney, by examining the gizzards of 17 'ducks forwarded from
the Area', of four different species. However, he became wary of this proof, 'as it
was evident that some of the ducks, prior to being killed had been forcibly or
purposefully fed with mature rice grains' (1932: 603. See also Ellis, 1940: 201-202;
Correspondence, 1926, Australian Museum) (Figure 14.2). Kinghorn therefore
decided to make his own field investigations. This was only the third season of a
commercial rice crop in the MIA and controversies around ducks in rice fields had
already begun.