Dr Bill Burrows FTSE is a retired Senior Principal Scientist from QDPI/QDAF whose 40+ years’ career focussed on semi-arid pasture systems. Email: wburrows@iinet.net.au
Buffel grass is a highly productive, resilient pasture plant. It contributes enormously to sheep and cattle production in north Australia’s drier regions. It is also a very effective erosion and dust control agent. Buffel is readily accepted in the diet of grass eating marsupials. It has had a pivotal role in enhancing survival of Queensland’s critically endangered northern hairy nosed wombat. Buffel is a successional species that benefits from soil disturbance. Herbicides that kill buffel, also kill other non-target species. If ungrazed, this plant can increase fire intensity when it occurs. However, areas burnt in Australia have declined significantly in the past 100+ years. Meanwhile fires can reopen woodlands subject to tree/shrub thickening over similar timeframes. Buffel is today a fully naturalised species. Attempts to remove it from the landscape are neither feasible nor desirable. There is no case for designating it a WoNS in Australia.
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The value of our northern beef industry would be much lower today if it were not for the introduction of buffel grass into our grazing systems. Likewise, in its absence there would be far greater wind and water erosion present on landscapes now supporting buffel. Only agenda driven zealots (and likeminded governments/bureaucracies) would want to remove buffel grass from our grazing land or state/territory. The simple fact is that today, buffel grass is a naturalised component of Australia’s flora, especially within northern semi-arid/arid rangelands. As such it is here to stay, and no exorbitant outlay of funds or demonisation of the plant will prevent it occupying suitable niches still available to it. Classifying buffel grass as a Weed of National Significance (WoNS) or just describing it as a weed would be little different to classifying sheep and cattle as exotic pest animals. Get over it!
Buffel grass is a successional species. This means it is a high nutrient (notably nitrogen) demanding plant. The simplest way to increase nitrogen availability (for plants) in the soil of extensive systems is to cultivate or otherwise disturb the soil structure, hastening the decomposition of soil organic matter. Trying to remove buffel grass by soil disturbance (hand or mechanical means) is therefore counterproductive – especially if the plant’s seed loads in the soil are already high. On the other hand, many old buffel stands in Central Queensland have become less productive as nitrogen availability decreases over time. Other forms of ‘pasture dieback’ have also been reported. Buffel is an apomictic species with seeds that reproduce asexually, meaning they develop without fertilization. This results in offspring that are mostly genetically identical to the parent plant (except in cases of nonrecurrent apomixis). Hybridisation within the species is rare with the main commercial cultivars (Biloela, Gayndah and American) offering different but consistent structural characteristics.
I am not aware of any herbicide that is specific to buffel grass alone, or one that would not also kill co-habiting native herbaceous plants. Buffel is highly resilient to fire with reports that ungrazed buffel pasture can burn intensely, thus posing a threat to both desirable and undesirable species in pasture systems.
But is fire as widespread as it was in the past? First, it is now apparent that fire incidence in Australia’s landscape has dropped over the past 100 years (see graph 1 and 2 as examples). Changed fire regimes at a continental scale appear to follow the introduction and management of domestic livestock – with this phenomenon common in most areas of the world previously managed by hunter-gatherer societies. Second, reduced burning in rangelands has accelerated since WWII with increased availability of graders, 4WD vehicles and fire trucks, portable petrol pumps etc i.e. the ability to control and suppress fires on grazing land. Third, in 1970 cattle husbandry staff in QDPI advised that “where drought is a recurring threat to animal production the needless or automatic burning of all mature herbage each year is no longer wise, since even low-quality herbage can be used to maintain cattle, if supplemented with urea-molasses licks”. Fourth, if there are niches available in Parks and Reserves that can be occupied by naturalised buffel grass then lived experience suggests this plant will ‘find’ them at the right time. Managers of such places will therefore need to remain alert and act accordingly if they consider buffel ingress will be detrimental. But is this so?
Ted Christie noted that deep rooted poplar box (Eucalyptus populnea) trees growing on infertile soils in central- and south-western Queensland accumulated nutrients beneath their tree canopies. This microhabitat is favoured by buffel grass cf. inter-canopy zones. Christie’s results showed that when poplar box tree canopy zones accounted for just 7% of a paddock’s land area (a common box tree canopy cover in these systems), the pasture productivity of buffel grass growing beneath box canopies contributed 20% of total pasture yield in the paddock. [For further details see Tropical Grasslands archived journal issues: Click on the green arrow at Vol 9 (1975), p. 243].
In the 1980’s Queensland’s National Parks and Wildlife Service was concerned that buffel grass was invading the Epping Forest NP, NW of Clermont. This park aimed to protect and hopefully enhance the last known population of the critically endangered northern hairy nosed wombat (NHNW). There were about 60-70 animals remaining at that time. As the buffel grass population and biomass increased in this reserve the wombat population also increased, such that it was possible to transfer “excess” animals to new back-up reserves established in the St George district of southern Qld. The total population of these marsupials in all reserves now exceeds 400 individuals.
Excluding predators and livestock from these protected areas no doubt also aided the wombat population increase. But certainly, the availability of buffel grass for the wombat’s diet has been of enormous benefit to their survival – see this recent paper and also the NHNW link with buffel grass in background. I would be surprised if similar studies did not produce like results if undertaken for a broad range of other grass eating marsupials in the drier regions of Northern Australia (including the Northern Territory) – where buffel grass is now a naturalised component of our flora. And since its widespread introduction into the semi-arid northern grazing lands the presence of buffel grass has certainly contributed to the ability of sheep flocks , cattle herds, and kangaroo populations to survive recurrent droughts. Read the caption on the following link.
Finally, the manager of a large rangeland holding in the early 1960’s recited this ditty to me:
“Buffel here, buffel there, buffel, buffel everywhere –
I must shuffle and buy more buffel.”
Well, he and his peers did. And today the country and domestic livestock (as well as grass eating marsupials) have benefited enormously from their foresight. Plainly buffel is not a WoNS. But if it was classified as such it would be generally prohibited to sell, distribute or grow this pasture plant; and it would have strict management guidelines associated with it. Such conditions would be untenable to livestock producers in sub-coastal and western Queensland. If people have concerns, they need to learn to manage buffel in their own situation, not demonise it so others whose livelihoods depend on its presence are penalised for growing a naturalised plant which is of great benefit to rural communities and the nation.
Bruce Cook (ed) (2001) Buffel Grass Symposium: Proceedings of a Workshop held at Theodore, 21-23 February 2000 (64 pp.). Queensland Department of Primary Industries,Brisbane. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nw8c6pXMtcEzvJZi-6VXOpPGVNzP_keN/view
Submitted: 22 May 2025