Alexander Vaughan is the Policy Advocacy Coordinator at the Arid Lands Environment Centre in Alice Springs. Email: policy@alec.org.au
We do not have to wait until a fatality occurs to recognise that buffel grass invasion has extreme and negative impacts. We already know that buffel monocultures are causing fire-fuelled disasters across huge areas of inland Australia; in National Parks, in Indigenous Protected Areas, on crown land, affecting tourism and human health, degrading sacred sites, impacting 31 threatened species and ecological communities and putting livelihoods and lives at risks in towns like Alice Springs, as well as countless remote communities. Buffel has already spread to every mainland state and the NT. We must finally act in a coordinated and strategic manner, but also with urgency and vision. WoNS listing is a key step to addressing this significant challenge.
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We do not have to wait until a fatality occurs to recognise that buffel grass invasion has extreme and negative impacts. We already know that buffel grass monocultures are causing fire-fuelled disasters across huge areas of inland Australia; in National Parks, in Indigenous Protected Areas, on crown land, affecting tourism and human health, degrading sacred sites, impacting 31 threatened species and ecological communities and putting livelihoods and lives at risks in towns like Alice Springs, as well as countless remote communities across the arid lands. Buffel grass has already spread to every mainland state and the Northern Territory. In 2025, we must finally act in a coordinated and strategic manner, but also with urgency and vision.
Decades have already been lost. Nearly 40 years ago, in 1987, Northern Territory Government ecologist, Penny Van Oosterzee warned in a newspaper opinion piece that:
“there is growing concern amongst the scientific community of the impact of buffel grass, that in the long run the buffel grass band-aid may not be terribly healthy. Buffel grass is here without its pests and natural diseases. It is a grass suited to this environment. It therefore has open-slather to take over and change the environment. It does this by out-competing other plants for the limited amount of moisture in the soil. Young native seedlings, therefore, cannot survive and their numbers decline. The real worry though is that once established, buffel does so well that it moves into natural habitats such as creek forages. This, combined with the fact that it is a fire hazard, results in fire sensitive natives… being obliterated”.
This reality has borne true. After decades of denial, suppression, neglect and finger-pointing, millions of hectares have been invaded, transforming native grasslands, woodlands and river systems into a monoculture of fire promoting buffel grass.
We know that buffel grass is globally recognised as one of the worst and most impactful invaders of arid and semi-arid environments. We know that buffel grass is already listed as a threat in the recovery plans or conservation advice of 31 EPBC listed threatened species and ecological communities. We know that buffel grass is the greatest invasive species threat to cultures and environments across Central Australia. We know that buffel grass was part of the devastating fires in Hawaii, which resulted in over 100 fatalities.
Without intervention, we know that buffel grass will continue to spread rapidly after above average wet years, continuing its march across the continent. Climate change will further enhance this spread, and compound the impacts posed by fire.
National recognition is an olive branch to arid and semi-arid areas that are not yet invaded by buffel grass, and to significant sites that are invaded but not yet destroyed. From Uluru and Kata Tjuta to Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre and many of Australia’s 10 deserts.
Inaction is a choice. A new direction and path awaits that we can all assist in shaping.
We can work together right now and contribute to historic change. Collectively, we can act on our understanding of the catastrophic risks posed by current and future buffel grass invasion. We can prioritise national coordination, targeted strategic management and research.
This is exactly what national recognition through a Weed of National Significance (WoNS) listing will do. A WoNS listing would establish a National Buffel Grass Taskforce which would include broad and diverse membership to improve coordination, and be supported by the recruitment of a National Buffel Grass Coordinator, result in a national Buffel Grass Strategic Plan which will identify key activities for targeted and strategic management, and national recognition will remove barriers inhibiting coordination and research between sectors and states. Together, this will boost the work of thousands of land managers who are already managing buffel grass to do so in a more coordinated, impactful and strategic manner.
Further, a WoNS listing and the subsequent National Buffel Grass Taskforce is the precise forum in which ongoing dialogue and debate should occur to determine how to collectively respond to this problematic reality. Unmanaged buffel grass is suffocating hillsides, river systems, flood plains, sand dunes, sand plains and backyards! Unmanaged buffel spread must be recognised as a form of pollution that will degrade new landscape after new landscape, with the potential to spread across up to 68 percent of the continent. We need a nationally coordinated forum to address the buffel problem.
Ranger groups and other land managers should not be left to address this existential threat in isolation, without coordinated or strategic support.
We know that there is a huge groundswell of support for action on buffel grass. We have heard the demands firsthand from doctors, peak health organisations, tourism operators, ranger groups, art centres, unions, conservation groups, land managers and of course governments in the Northern Territory and South Australia (and beyond!). Importantly, we have heard the voices of remote communities who have been demanding action for years and who live with the negative consequences of buffel invasion daily.
A WoNS listing, National Buffel Grass Taskforce, a National Buffel Grass Coordinator and National Buffel Grass Strategic Plan are key steps towards a positive vision for millions of currently uninvaded hectares of inland Australia whose destiny must not be to become fire-promoting buffel grass monocultures.
Submitted: 21 May 2025