Buffel grass. Credit: doe via Atlas of Living Australia (CC-BY-NC 4.0).
Buffel grass is one of rangeland Australia’s most wicked and unresolved challenges – a plant that is valued and vaunted in some areas and despised and feared in others.
Although seldom acknowledged by key protagonists, common ground and a win/win for all stakeholders could be found by pragmatic informed discussion. The longer we procrastinate, the greater the division and danger.
Buffel grass is undeniably resilient and well adapted to degraded sites where few other plants can thrive. A drought-resistant C4 perennial introduced from Africa to provide erosion control and cattle fodder where native grasses were scarce, buffel has taken to the Outback like ibis to a picnic ground.
The fast growing ‘King of Pastures’ has been lauded and passionately protected by much of the northern beef industry against any attempt to rein in its dominance. Other pastoralists are concerned about buffel’s replacement of more palatable native forage or buffel-fueled fires that burn their drought refuge ‘top-feed’. But the dominant message from northern pastoralists is: “Don’t touch our buffel!”
Alongside its pastoral value, there is absolutely no dispute that buffel also represents the most insidious and uncontrollable threat to many Australian arid ecosystems. From the mighty red gum creeks of the MacDonnell Ranges to the coastal Cape Range, buffel is malignantly and permanently desecrating iconic desert environments. Diverse native grasslands, majestic desert oak groves, ephemeral river woodlands and mighty mountain ranges have been transformed into depauperate landscapes largely devoid of native species. Australian plants can’t compete with the aggressive invader, nor reach maturity between more intense and frequent buffel-fueled fires.
Buffel Grass distribution throughout Australia. Source: Atlas of Living Australia.
First Nations representatives across the deserts have been shouting valiantly for action on Mamu Tjampi or ‘devil grass’ that is ruining their access to traditional foods and culture and threatening their settlements with outrageously intense wildfires. On any cultural or environmental ledger, the scale and scope of buffel’s impact rank it at the pinnacle of Australia’s significant weeds.
As an arid zone ecologist, I am frequently confronted with the duality of assisting the recovery of threatened mammals in carefully managed areas, whilst helplessly watching buffel march through and undo all the hard work by transforming their habitats into wastelands. It’s depressing and culturally insulting for Traditional Owners to experience yet another wave of colonial misappropriation that is again forcing them to abandon their lifestyle and traditions.
This unresolved wicked dichotomy of views on buffel has been debated for decades. Yet despite the valiant but typically ineffectual actions of gangs of herbicide sprayers, buffel has continued to spread and thicken through remote natural environments every time it rains, or burns. Indigenous rangers have unfairly and unrealistically carried much of the burden of attempting to hold back the tide. Ironically, buffel only seems to be slowing down through nutrient drawdown or dieback in some areas where deliberately planted. Buffel’s struggle where planted but rampant expansion where unwanted is like ibis struggling at shrinking natural wetlands but plaguing as ‘bin chickens’ at dumps and picnic grounds.
The EPBC Act recognised in 2014 that the invasion of buffel grass represents a threat of ecosystem degradation, habitat loss and decline in 31 conservation rated species in arid and semi-arid Australia. This threat abatement advice promoted raising “awareness within the pastoral industry of the risks and costs associated with the use of buffel grass, including risk to life, property and tree fodder, depletion of soil nutrients, decline in buffel grass nutritional value over the long term and transformation of pastoral land to a buffel grass monoculture”. Most importantly, this decade-old statement advocates for development of “tools for effective management of buffel grass and protection of assets, including early detection, eradication where feasible and restoration of areas once buffel is removed”.
Fast forward to 2025 and an additional 20 threatened species plus several ecological communities are also now considered threatened by buffel, but no new tools have been developed. Buffel has now been declared a weed in South Australia and Northern Territory and both New South Wales and Western Australia also formally recognise its threat to biodiversity. Despite this recognition, our management of buffel has been inept, suffering from a total lack of national strategy or coordination.
Common ground starts with the uniform expectation of all farmers and other land custodians to contain their own livestock and impacts. Buffel transforming National Parks and Indigenous Protected Areas is as disturbing and unneighbourly as ‘vermin’ from unfarmed areas desecrating farmland or GMO crops overflowing into organic neighbours.
Graziers who are opponents of buffel control policy fear that targeting ‘their’ grass where it’s a weed will prevent them from maintaining valued forage. Yet there are many examples where animals including dingoes, koalas and even endearing sugar gliders are vaunted and protected conservation icons in some areas and considered pests elsewhere. Similarly, olives and blackberries, like genetically modified crops, are encouraged where planted but controlled with vigour where they are invasive. We can, we should, treat buffel as both a resource and a weed.
I’ve yet to meet anyone, khaki shirt or blue, who reckons the spread of buffel can be arrested by herbicides in remote areas. We desperately need to explore alternate tools to control buffel grass invasion hundreds of kilometres from any pastoral infrastructure. Let’s start by asking some questions:
Is it possible to retain buffel cover, maybe even enhance its productivity, in areas where beneficial for pastoralists but at the same time restrict its invasion of diverse native ecosystems?
Is it possible that decompositor insects from the native range of buffel could achieve what our native termites seem incapable of doing. Could they benefit pastoralists by recycling nutrients from rank buffel that is of no value to livestock, rather than fuelling the next wildfire?
Are there other tools that enable deep-rooted buffel to be retained where desired but inhibit the production or dispersal of fertile seed?
These questions shouldn’t be hypothetical. They should top of the agenda for all benevolent landowners who want to retain buffel, and the much larger cohort of land custodians who are desperate to control their greatest scourge. Australia is increasingly well served by government-funded control programs to control agricultural pests. We also have an increasing inventory of safe havens where environmental threats have been fenced out. But we have no landscape-scale buffel-free zones, probably because the cost of maintaining buffel-free areas has been calculated at forty times more expensive than keeping feral cats, rabbits or camels at bay.
Despite its profile and resources, even Uluru National Park has conceded control of buffel is unfeasible. Nothing short of biological control can contain this master invader that germinates and seeds earlier than native grasses after fire, and which forms dense thickets that fuels hot fires that kill its competitors. Yet despite the Commonwealth’s own recommendation to support research on buffel biological control, there has been no action for over a decade since the buffel Threat Abatement Plan was penned.
The spectre or opportunity of ‘biological control’ heightens emotions and blood pressure. How’s yours now? If your heart is racing at the mention of biological control let me offer reassurance. Disasters like the ill-fated introduction of cane toads are far rarer than inspirational biological control success stories. CSIRO alone have carefully introduced over 120 agents to control over 30 weeds. Biological agents don’t eradicate pests and are often limited to certain environments or seasons. Rabbit farmers can immunise their stock against RHD that decimated wild feral rabbit populations. Similarly, pastoralists and rangers could potentially manipulate use of biological agents through integrated pest management to seasons and locations where planted pastures are protected but buffel’s spread is curtailed.
Now, if you are concerned with the conservation of native ecosystems and indigenous cultures, then let me raise your blood pressure again by reminding you that neither CSIRO or other government organisations are even searching for potential safe, targeted biological control options.
Grass biocontrols are risky because they could affect native grasses. But just as risky emergency surgery to remove cancerous organs or amputate gangrenous limbs is typically justifiable to save lives, buffel biocontrol has well and truly passed the threshold of nice-to-have but avoidable elective surgery. Buffel is, right now, wiping out native grasses, maybe the same species that might be affected by a biocontrol. Adding to this is the threat to shrubs and trees, insects and lizards across vast areas of the Outback. The longer we sit back worrying about potential risks to particular grasses, the deeper the impacts of this very active threat. Making a start through at least searching for and assessing potential biocontrol tools is urgently needed, before buffel contributes even more to Australia’s extinction crisis
We owe it to our ancient cultures, our native grasses, desert wildflowers, iconic wildlife and ultimately to our farmers and pastoralists to prioritise the cooperative pursuit of a fair and effective solution to perhaps Australia’s most important and wicked environmental challenge.