To:
The Hon. Murray Watt, Minister for the Environment and The Hon. Julie Collins, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry,
Across the heart of this continent, our arid and semi-arid lands are being swallowed by a dull, straw-green tide. This tide is a threat to the planet’s longest surviving culture, it is a growing public health risk, an environmental disaster, economic burden, and it is dividing communities.
This straw-green tide is buffel grass, it is tjanpi kura (bad grass), mamu tjanpi, and it is not only changing the landscape, it’s changing life itself.
In central Australia - buffel grass is everywhere it should not be, a weed occupying hundreds of kilometres, fracturing landscapes that hold songlines and sacred sites. It chokes waterways and ceremony places, leaving dust where there was once life.
Grasslands invaded with buffel have five times more fuel than the native grasslands. It grows back faster and displaces native desert grass and flowers. Native trees that have stood for centuries and wildlife that have walked this Country long before we, are being wiped out at a pace that it cannot naturally regenerate. The seeds and smoke it produces contribute to asthma and respiratory problems, posing a growing risk to those who live on and care for Country.
Buffel grass is linked to the decline of over 30 nationally listed threatened species. Bush foods, medicines, and native plants are disappearing, limiting the ability to practice and pass down traditional knowledge. The witchetty bush for instance, once a marker of food and life, is suffocating beneath it. The transformation of diverse landscapes into buffel monocultures and the loss of native plants and wildlife is threatening the landscape's ecological balance. The loss of culturally significant species breaks connections that have sustained First Nations identity and Lore for millennia. It also deeply saddens communities who have been custodians of this Country for thousands of years, fought for decades to have it returned, and are now fighting to restore the health of place and the health of people.
Managing buffel has placed a heavy burden on land care groups, Indigenous rangers, and individual community members. Some rise before dawn to pull buffel by hand, driven by love for Country and grief for what’s being lost. This is a multifaceted burden of resources that simultaneously diverts energy and attention from fulfilling other cultural and environmental priorities for those stretched by fighting this endless tide of buffel.
Buffel was first proposed as a Key Threatening Process in 2012, but the listing never came. In the years since, it has continued to spread unchecked, changing landscapes faster than anyone can heal them. Between those who depend on it to make a living, and those fighting to manage it so future generations can live, it is not one against the other, buffel can be both a pastoral feed and a devastating invader. If we can find unity in facing it, across communities, industries, and governments, the desert might heal enough to breathe again.
We demand the Australian Government recognise and act on this significant invasive species and:
- Recognise it is a Weed of National Significance
- List buffel as a Key Threatening Process
- Fund a national action plan with coordination for buffel research, planning and on the ground action
Please take immediate national action to manage and control buffel grass across Australia's ecologically threatened arid zones.
Thank you for your support,
Your name, Your residential address, Your electorate
