INVASION OF THE CROCODILES - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 247

evolutionary history. And as we see the effects of climate change, their 'natural
habitat' may also undergo spatial shifts.
Australian attitudes to nativeness
Head and Muir (2004) argue that 'in Australia, the relationship between the
continent and the nation has facilitated a simplistic distinction between the native
species and exotic invasives in public environmental debates and the national
imaginary'. The date of British colonisation (1788) is used as the 'marker of pro-
found social and ecological change' which 'fixes the temporal threshold of native-
ness for many . . .' (ibid.: 202). Deciding what is indigenous and what 'belongs' is
complicated, they maintain, in an ex-colony 'where settler human populations are
still coming to terms with their own belonging, particularly in relation to the
indigenous prior inhabitants' (ibid.: 203).
Head and Muir note (as do others) that Aboriginal peoples had been responsible
for significant environmental change for thousands of years prior to 1788 (ibid.:
202). Problematically for simplistic attempts to link indigenous peoples and the
country's 'native' biota, Aboriginal people have opposed the destruction of
introduced species such as the water buffalo, which they now hunt and which they
have incorporated into their ceremonial lives. Aboriginal people have made
intellectual space for introduced animals and accepted their role in Australian
ecosystems (Trigger et al ., 2008: 1274). Water buffalo are of particular interest in
this regard because they have been very destructive of crocodile nesting habitat.
From the perspective of Northern Territory wildlife management authorities, one
of the environmental gains of the legalised, controlled crocodile egg harvest has
been improved management of feral animals and weeds. Water buffalo, feral pigs,
and introduced plants such as Mimosa pigra are controlled by landowners because
they are judged harmful to crocodile nesting habitat (Leach et al ., 2009: 4, 16).
The Wilderness Society's 'Wild Country Initiative' (WCI) seeks to 'imagine
Australia as it was before 1788' when Europeans arrived, using that as point zero
for the onset of environmental degradation of the country. In a study of WCI
programmes Trigger et al . (2010) found that attitudes to ecological restoration to
desirable landscapes differed between southwestern Australia and northern
Australia. In a survey of farmers engaged in a WCI to preserve the malleefowl,
Trigger et al . found that in the southwest, restoration was 'conceived in terms of
transforming established agricultural landscapes' (ibid.: 1070). In contrast, in the
north where the landscape was regarded as still undeveloped wilderness under the
stewardship of Aboriginals believed to have a more natural relationship with the
land, conservation was stressed over restoration. In the southwest, the socio-
economic context and the land-use culture of settler farmers generated a vision of
the restoration of a species within the framework of a mosaic of working/worked
agricultural landscapes and undeveloped or 'restored' areas. In the north, the
landscape is envisioned as predominantly natural, and removal (of harmful species
which don't 'belong', like the invasive cane toad) is the dominant response.