Opinion – Buffel is a Weed of National Significance: Adrian Tomlinson

July 11, 2025

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Adrian Tomlinson lives in Mparntwe Alice Springs and is an administrator for the Buffel Information and Action Group. Adrian was CEO at the Arid Lands Environment Centre from 2022 to 2024. He has around 20 years accumulated experience in the Northern Territory and Western Australian public services. He holds degrees in Environmental Engineering and Philosophy and has first hand experience of the regenerative power of buffel removal by caring for an Alice Springs Landcare site. Email: adrianjtomlinson@gmail.com

Buffel grass is nominated as a weed of national significance. This is long overdue. The nomination details its enormous impacts across health, culture, arts, tourism and ecology.  

In central Australia, like many other places we have and continue to witness its devastating spread.  Buffel grass invasion threatens vast swathes of Australia. It knows no boundaries. National coordinated management is essential. 

WONS listing provides a critical pathway for overdue action on buffel grass. It will give ample consideration to agricultural interests. The WONS nomination will test whether Australia’s invasive weeds governance architecture is sufficient to manage invasive weeds with cross-sectoral impacts.

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Opinion 

The Umuwa Statement On Buffel Grass describes the harrowing lived experience of how buffel grass invasion impacts our country and people living in remote areas. It calls for a National response. 

Philosopher Freya Mathews describes buffel grass invasion as ‘an unfolding tragedy of epic proportions’. 

If you are not yet familiar with buffel grass and live in mainland Australia – you will soon learn all about it – 70% of mainland Australia is suitable for spread, and it is spreading fast. It may be there already! 

Buffel grass is a fiercely invasive grass. It aggressively blankets other species, responds positively to fire, grazing and slashing. It is the first plant to spring back after any of these events.  Research shows buffel grass is the greatest invasive species threat to arid and semi-arid lands. 

Buffel grass has been nominated as a Weed of National Significance (WONS). Better late than never, this is an important step. 

The nomination document, submitted by the Indigenous Desert Alliance and partners, is compelling. It details how buffel grass is recognised as a threat in the conservation advice and recovery plans of at least 31 threatened species listed under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). Places like central Australia are witnessing ecosystem collapse in real time. 

At a state level the threats to species and ecosystems recognised under legislation multiply. For example in Western Australia two Threatened Ecological Communities and 13 Priority Ecological Communities, have buffel grass invasion listed as a threat.

Buffel grass’ relationship with fire is deeply problematic. Along with climate change, it is extending our dangerous fire seasons. It also increases the burn intensity, spatial extent, occurrence and frequency of fires. It has a positive fire feedback loop. This accelerates the tragic ecosystem transformation we are witnessing.  

In central Australia the Australian and New Zealand Council for Fire and Emergency Services seasonal outlook for fire is now routinely upgraded because of buffel grass. Before long, like Maui in Hawaii, where buffel grass was one of the grasses that fuelled the deadly fires of 2023, a community will be devastated. Loss of human life to match the fatal impacts already being felt by non-humans.

Less reported but of enormous consequence are buffel grass’ other health impacts.  These include increased hospital presentations associated with air pollution. It degrades the foundational determinants of Aboriginal health outcomes in remote areas like healthy culture and access to food and country. 

Buffel grass is undermining food security by destroying the local, diverse, resilient food sources this country has to offer. 

Where I live in central Australia buffel grass has and continues to transform landscapes and ecosystems. The rare desert blooms following autumn rains are becoming a thing of the past.  Old river gums in riparian corridors and shallow groundwater areas are disappearing after repeated buffel fires. There is no such thing as a healthy river corridor with a buffel grass infestation.  

After rain, buffel’s pulsing growth and absence of insect life is eerie.  It feels like encountering a cane toad. Big and ungainly, un-belonging and dangerous. 

While I was at the Arid Lands Environment Centre, we along with the Indigenous Desert Alliance, were awarded an Invasive Species Council Froggatt Award for community advocacy on buffel grass. In this time buffel grass was declared a weed in the Northern Territory. Weed declaration was a long overdue acknowledgement of our reality. 

The central Australian community was explicitly recognised in the award.  Little wonder.  We are all paying the price.  The local Buffel Action Network at its Todd Mall Market stalls can attest to how concern about buffel grass unifies our community.  Its impacts across health, culture, arts, tourism and ecology are enormous.  

A rare voice in largely opposing strong action on buffel grass is the pastoral industry. In central Australia the industry is a comparatively small contributor (less than 4%) to our economy. It has a cultural attachment to buffel grass. It was introduced based upon Government advice as a tool to deliberately transform country. It was seen as a panacea to land decline caused by stocking and western settlement at a time when colonising arid lands was an unequivocal goal. It continues to be purposefully spread. 

I understand how best practice advice changes and we all must learn and adapt. As a child in rural western Australia we planted Sydney Golden Wattle (Acacia longifolia). It was good practice at the time. The folly was not realised until later. Better land care practices were developed. Now my parents are doing their best to remove the increasingly pervasive wattles. 

Not acting and furthering buffel grass’s spread will cause more extinctions, destroy sacred sites and ecosystems. It will disappear more words from ancient languages and destroy culture.  

Managing buffel grass invasion is therefore an act of love, of country and communities. Opposing action is privileging self-interest over all else. 

The WONS process should provide a pathway for equitable consideration of interests. Listing buffel grass would give the issue the respect it deserves and create space for having fair-minded conversations. It will provide certainty that we are working to reduce its spread and impacts. 

Those from the agricultural sector who are concerned about a WONS listing can be assured that agriculture interests are very well served within Australia’s biosecurity architecture. The management settings are decided by the National Biosecurity Committee (NBC), through the Environment and Invasives Committee.   

The NBC is conceived under the Intergovernmental Agreement on Biosecurity (IGAB). It constitutes and authorises the NBC to provide the strategic management and oversight of the national biosecurity system and intergovernmental relationships. The NBC reports to the Agriculture Senior Officials Committee (AGSOC), which in turn reports to the Agriculture Ministers’ Forum.   

Minister’s for the environment, indigenous affairs, health, tourism and arts do not have this same power. The buffel WONS nomination will test whether our biosecurity governance architecture is strong enough to deal with an invasive weed whose impacts extend far beyond the agricultural sector.  If it fails this test then we must ask ‘What is wrong with our biosecurity architecture?’. 

A fire fed by buffel in a river gum and coolibah woodland just south of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). 

Submitted: 30 May 2025