INVASION OF THE CROCODILES - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 253

We live in hybrid environments now, neither totally domesticated nor totally
wild. Changes wrought by anthropocentric climate change, development and
conservation shape the interactions of humans and the introduced and indigenous
biota of ecosystems everywhere. We are still trying to work out the amplitude of
environmental variability in ecosystems familiar to us, and to grasp the ecological
consequences of unprecedented accelerations in anthropogenic ecological change.
What is clear is that there is no indigenous or native nature 'out there' or 'out back'
which does not bear our fingerprints. In our interactions with our planet's wilder
spaces and their denizens we need to think beyond our remembered and idealised
places.
Acknowledgements
St Antony's College, Oxford, provided institutional support during the development
of my current research programme, which is now funded by an Imperial College
London Junior Research Fellowship, based at Imperial College Conservation
Science. My thanks to Adam Britton for comments on the text. Special thanks are
due to Jodi Frawley and Iain McCalman for inviting me to this stimulating conference
at the University of Sydney.
Notes
1 I am indebted to Christopher Brochu for patiently walking me through some of the
complexities of crocodilian taxonomy - any oversimplifications or errors are entirely my
own responsibility.
2 Search for 'Thomas Baines crocodile' at: http://trove.nla.gov.au (accessed 5 December
2013).
3 Notable crocs preceding these films include Sweetheart, discussed below, and the
eponymous crocodile in Grahame Webb's novel Numunwari - and subsequently,
crocodiles feature in the poems of Les Murray. Les Murray mentions or describes
crocodiles in the poems 'Flood Plains on the Coast Facing Asia' and 'Kimberley Brief',
for example.
4 For the Department's view: Leach et al . (2009) Management Program for the Saltwater
Crocodile , p. 9; for the Irwins' opposition: see http://www.rspca.org.au/media-centre/
media-release-archive/rspca-and-bob-irwin-slam-croc-safari-hunting.html (accessed 17
April 2013).
5 For Plumwood's account, see http://valplumwood.com/2008/03/08/being-prey/
(accessed 17 April 2013).
References
Anon. 1875. Australia Felix, Text books in geography, letter to the editor. The Argus
(Melbourne), 16 November.
BBC. 2007. British Broadcasting Corporation, blurb for Invasion of the Crocodiles . Available
at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007gv00 (accessed 19 April 2013).
Brochu, C. A. 2003. Phylogenetic approaches toward Crocodylian history. Annual Review of
Earth and Planetary Sciences , 31, 357-397.