REMAKING WETLANDS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 223

therefore be more easily puddled by ducks and were often washed onto the banks
by wind (ibid.: 608).
The main conclusion of Kinghorn's report was that overall 'wild ducks' were
'not a serious pest of rice crops'. While ducks as well as other '[n]ative companions'
could do some damage if they descended in large numbers during droughts, he
found that it was 'impossible to say' the extent of this damage, as there were many
other factors, and critters, involved (ibid.: 607-608). Kinghorn pointed to a
complex situation emerging in rice areas, which was not just about ducks and rice
but many other connections and relationships.
While we can perhaps recognise an ecological approach in Kinghorn's study, he
did not couch his research in theses terms. Ecology was not then being widely taken
up as an applied science and there is no evidence that Kinghorn took a particular
interest in the emerging field (Dunlap, 1997: 76-78; Robin, 1997: 68-70; ).
Kinghorn's approach is perhaps better understood through changing approaches in
field biology and his research echoes other field studies being undertaken around
the world at the time. For instance, Herbert Stoddard's work on the decline of
quail numbers in Georgia from 1924 to 1929, undertaken for the US Agricultural
Department's Bureau of Biological Survey at the request of hunters, took a broadly
comparable approach (albeit to a very different question), and Stoddard also claimed
that a central factor was farming practices, which adversely affected the quail
(Dunlap, 1997: 77-78). Historian Thomas Dunlap has argued that Stoddard's
research was not explicitly ecology but that it nevertheless 'was marked by a new
view of nature . . . [where] Nature was not observed, it was constructed' (1997:
77-78). Similarly, Kinghorn placed people within the landscape in a relatively new
way by arguing that a key issue was farming practices.
Kinghorn thought that the belief by some farmers that ducks were responsible
for significant rice damage was mostly 'the outcome of imagination and founded on
hearsay' (1932: 606). Perhaps preempting a backlash by farmers, in his unpublished
report (which appears to have been available to growers), Kinghorn wrote:
for the information of the growers, I would like to say that I went into this
matter absolutely unbiased, and in the early days of the investigation was
inclined to believe ducks were doing a lot of damage. As time advanced my
opinion changed and I was eventually able to prove to my satisfaction that the
alleged damage was exaggerated.
(unpublished report quoted in Ellis, 1940: 203)
Yet, enough farmers maintained that ducks did do appreciable damage that after
further complaints in 1932, the NSW government allowed farmers to apply to shoot
ducks, waterhens, and red-bills, on their property from August to December.
However, Frith later indicated that 'only six applications for permits were received'
(1957a: 32). 4
Kinghorn's findings may have been dismissed as 'top-down' science, which was
often resented by farmers. Further, farmers may have disagreed with Kinghorn