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Ecological Restoration in Australia:Environmental Discourses, LandscapeIdeals, and the Significance of HumanAgencyDavid S. Trigger a , Yann Toussaint b & Jane Mulcock ba School of Social Science, University of Queensland , Brisbane,Australiab School of Social and Cultural Studies, University of WesternAustralia , Perth, AustraliaPublished online: 20 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: David S. Trigger , Yann Toussaint & Jane Mulcock (2010) Ecological Restoration inAustralia: Environmental Discourses, Landscape Ideals, and the Significance of Human Agency, Society& Natural Resources: An International Journal, 23:11, 1060-1074, DOI: 10.1080/08941920903232902

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Ecological Restoration in Australia: EnvironmentalDiscourses, Landscape Ideals, and the Significance

of Human Agency

DAVID S. TRIGGER

School of Social Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

YANN TOUSSAINT AND JANE MULCOCK

School of Social and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia,Perth, Australia

In the relatively young postsettler society of Australia, restoring nature to a pre-European ideal prompts a range of responses. We consider first the case of farmersin the southwest who reinterpret restorationist ideals as commensurate with continuedproductive land use. A local native species, the iconic malleefowl, is construed as aflagship for revaluing nature in a way that remains consistent with farmers’ interestsand sense of identity. Farmers position themselves, rather than scientists or Aborigi-nal people, as key stewards for managing agricultural landscapes. In comparison,restoration ideals for northern Australia center on attempts to keep ‘‘still wild’’nature and Aboriginal culture intact. The invasive cane toad is reviled as ‘‘alien’’ inconservation-minded discourses; yet, where it has become familiar, it is also accordedpositive symbolic meanings. This article illustrates the critical importance ofqualitative cultural analysis in understanding the complexities of human agency inenvironmental management.

Keywords Australia, cultural values, ecological restoration, nativeness, nature

Social science and humanities approaches to environmental issues continue to pointout the difficulties with any conception of nature that ignores human agency. Notonly is it ‘‘deeply problematic’’ to assume an unchanging nature in perpetualbalance, but also, ways of describing and understanding the nonhuman world areinevitably entangled with cultural values (Cronon 1996, 24–25). Given that the ideaof nature contains ‘‘an extraordinary amount of human history’’ (Williams 1980, 67),

Received 17 April 2008; accepted 12 June 2009.This research has been supported by Australian Research Council grant DP0345224 and

the Anthropology Programs at the University of Western Australia and the University ofQueensland. Thanks to colleagues Lesley Head and Andrea Gaynor for feedback and toparticipants at the University of Zurich workshop (convened by Marcus Hall, July 2006) titled‘‘Restoring or renaturing? The presence of the past in ecological restoration.’’ We are alsoindebted to the editors’ and reviewers’ suggestions in the revision of the article.

Address correspondence to David S. Trigger, School of Social Science, University ofQueensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. E-mail: d.trigger@uq.edu.au

Society and Natural Resources, 23:1060–1074Copyright # 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0894-1920 print=1521-0723 onlineDOI: 10.1080/08941920903232902

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we would be naive to believe there are ‘‘uncomplicated choices between naturalthings, which are good, and unnatural things, which are bad’’ (Cronon 1996, 25–26).

From this perspective, the idea of ‘‘ecological restoration’’ might be understoodas a form of ‘‘design,’’ an expression of human will (Higgs 2003). The notion of‘‘restoring nature’’ is ambiguous, involving assumptions about the place of humansand diverse senses of the significance of the past (Hall 2005, xii–xiv). If we are to avoidthe risk of restoration ideals ‘‘burying human agency behind a wall of ecologicaljustifications,’’ the challenge looms large of interpreting community understandingsof environmental issues from a range of perspectives (Higgs 2003, 8). The public isof many minds about which sort of nature they prefer (Dizard 2006, 10), and thecontribution from social and cultural studies can thus address how science-drivenvisions of ecological restoration mesh with broader societal dispositions.

In building on a broad literature concerning the social construction of knowledgeof nature (Yearley 1984; Dizard 1994; Braun and Castree 1998; Herda-Rapp andGoedeke 2005), and in seeking to avoid any blunt dualism between nature and culture(Descola and Palsson 1996; Gerber 1997), it is not our purpose to defend an extremeconstructivist position. We acknowledge the ecological importance of restorationistconcerns and the urgency of environmental problems (Soule 1995), yet our work ascultural anthropologists takes us firmly to an appreciation of the sociohistoricalsignificance of people’s relations with land and its resources. In the Australian con-text, we aim to understand ideals and outcomes of restoration projects under study—particularly their strong focus on the idea of ‘‘native’’ landscapes. We argue that thisrequires paying empathetic attention to diverse human practical and symbolicengagements with biophysical environments that have been changing with waves ofhuman migration.

Australia is a setting with a historically young postcolonial society in an ecologi-cally distinct island continent, and the importance of sustaining ‘‘native’’ landscapesreceives considerable attention from expert biologists (Archer and Beale 2004;Burgman and Lindenmayer 1998). However, the complexities of human relationswith the country’s diverse environments, including ambiguities concerning howpeople think about the obvious postcolonial ecological hybridity surrounding them,deserve careful consideration (Franklin 2006; Head and Muir 2004; 2007; Low 2002;Seddon 2005). Australia’s version of politically contested debates about ‘‘humanimpacts’’ on ‘‘nature’’ presents an ‘‘intellectually fertile collision of a unique continen-tal ecology, longstanding indigenous traditions of environmental engagement, andthe diverse influences of later settler cultures’’ (Head 2007, 838). It is a case wellpositioned to illustrate what we understand, with Head (2007, 838) as a necessaryscholarly transition from fixedness on the concept of ‘‘impacts’’ to a more sophisti-cated understanding of the complexities of human ‘‘agency.’’

Methodologically, this article draws on ethnographic study and textual analysisto address these issues. In the Great Southern region of southwest Australia,participant observation and interviewing have been carried out over a period of sixyears with farmers, conservationists, and others to document people’s views andpractices regarding environmental management and land use. Between 2002 and2007, one of us (Toussaint) studied public debates, scientific practices, and com-munity involvement in conservation and restoration initiatives (Toussaint 2005). Amix of formal and informal interviews (n¼ 40) has been recorded, transcribed, andanalyzed for significant themes; these data have been supplemented with textualanalysis of documents discussing a wide range of environmental issues. In relation

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to restorationist visions for north Australia, two of us (Trigger and Mulcock) haveexamined debates in policy literature and the media as well as at relevant publicmeetings in the city of Perth, to focus particularly on the issue of preserving nativeenvironments in the face of introduced exotic species. This research has been carriedout during the period 2002 to 2006 and builds on broader studies comparing theenvironmental dispositions of interviewees (n¼ 60, encountered using a snowballselection method [Gray et al. 2007, 117]) in both northern and southwestern Australia(Trigger and Mulcock 2005; Trigger et al. 2008).

Ecological Restoration in Australia

In its most idealistic form, the notion of ecological restoration in the Australiancontext is to be found in the propositions of such environmental activist organiza-tions as The Wilderness Society (TWS). This organization’s promotional materialsdescribe its ‘‘Wild Country Initiative,’’ asking readers to:

Imagine Australia as it was before 1788 [the date of European arrival]—an ancient landscape with unique wildlife and ecosystems that evolvedlargely in isolation since the final break up of Gondwana 45 million yearsago. A wild and beautiful land, sustaining life in all its forms over theaeons and nurturing humans for at least 50,000 years. Draw the contrastwith Australia a little more than two centuries later. Large areas of ourlandscape are degraded and fragmented, in desperate need of restoration;our scarce remaining wild areas are under relentless pressure frommodern land use. (TWS n.d.-a)

In this view, the date of arrival of European settlers is the baseline from whichthe degradation of nature is seen to have occurred. The Wilderness Society ideal sug-gests some conceptual slippage between visions of Australia’s immense ecologicalhistory, initially as part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwanaland (Flannery1994), and the facts of Aboriginal human occupation. There appears to be an unwar-ranted assumption that Aboriginal ecological impacts were minimal and hence50,000 years of occupation brought little if any change to what had existed ‘‘foraeons.’’ Setting the time of European arrival as the baseline for ecological restorationrequires addressing long-term Aboriginal effects through a subsistence hunter=gatherer economy practiced prior to British colonization—including land manage-ment and modification through such practices as ‘‘fire stick farming’’ (Jones 1969)and possibly the hunting to extinction of megafauna (Flannery 1994, 180–186).Any equation of an idealized ancient ecological and cultural ‘‘native’’ past withan appropriately restored contemporary ‘‘natural’’ state arguably needs to be proble-matized (Head 2000). Not only are Indigenous peoples ill-served by reducing them toa romanticized role somehow within ‘‘nature’’ (Sackett 1991; White 1996), but also,there is now substantial recognition of change and disturbances as part of normalecosystems (Head 2007, 842).

Nevertheless, the Wild Country initiative is clear enough in its main point—thatAustralia after 200 years of European presence is ‘‘now a land where the interdepen-dence of all life is poorly understood by the majority of human inhabitants’’ (TWSn.d.-a). Thus, our focus is on what some regard as ecological recalcitrance on the partof contemporary Australians. We examine publicly circulating discourses that

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simultaneously engage with, yet differ from, many ecologists’ perspectives on what is‘‘good’’ for ecosystems (and thereby also ‘‘good’’ for people). As TWS suggests, it ishardly the case that ‘‘restoring’’ natural environments is uppermost in publicdiscussion across the population of some 21 million residents of Australia. Yet ifconservationists mistakenly assume that ‘‘when people know what they know, theywill also feel as they feel’’ (Milton 2002, 58), it is surely not surprising that there willbe less than fulsome embracing of aims to restore ‘‘wildness.’’ What of everydayexperience of domesticated environments that are worked intimately for economi-cally productive purposes? What of the subtleties of symbolic significance attributedto introduced species that may well be accorded disapproval yet remain positivelyfamiliar and meaningful?

Taking as an exemplar the type of restorationist agenda promoted by TWS, weconsider first a project in southwest Australia, where ‘‘restoration’’ ideals are reinter-preted among our case study group of farmers. Our vehicle for illustrating the experi-ential basis of landholder dispositions toward the notion of ecologically responsiblebehavior is a set of attitudes focused on the recuperation of a particular animal—themalleefowl (Leipoa ocellata), a ground-dwelling bird that builds impressively largemounds for egg incubation. The bird has been construed as a flagship species forenvironmental restoration across much of the southern half of the continent. Orig-inally occurring throughout the semi-arid south, the malleefowl is threatened boththrough vegetation clearing and predation by feral species (Malleefowl PreservationGroup 2008).

We then introduce a comparative Wild Country vision in northern Australia,which promotes preservation of an environment largely regarded as still ‘‘wild,’’having experienced a much less intensive period of postcolonization development incomparison to the farmed agricultural landscapes of the south. Our case study hereis a widely recognized ecologically destructive invasive species, the ‘‘cane toad’’ (Bufomarinus), originating from South America; yet we also find a mix of society-wide senti-ments that take us beyond the issue of the animal’s ecological impacts that conserva-tionist discourses emphasise. To grasp the breadth of the sociocultural significance ofthe toad, we need to not only consider ecological arguments about its impacts on other(native) species, but also interpret its symbolic position both in regions where it hasbecome familiar and in those into which it appears likely to spread. Given that thetoad can be reluctantly admired in certain ways, though despised in restorationistdiscourses, the north Australian case underscores the point raised by the southwestmaterial—that interpretation of deeply held human meanings is necessary if we areto understand society–environment relations more comprehensively than a one-dimensional set of environmental ‘‘impacts.’’ If there is to be a substantial theoreticalshift from ‘‘impacts to agency,’’ and a related refusal of any ontological separation ofculture and nature (Head 2007, 838), arguments for ecological restoration need toengage with the complications revealed through social and cultural analysis.

The Wild Country Project in Southwest Australia

Reflecting its environmental advocacy orientation, and influences from similar projectsin north America, TWS’s Australian Wild Country initiative was announced in 1997.

The Wild Country vision is unashamedly ambitious. It is to protect andrestore not just small patches of country, but entire ecosystems, along

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with the ecological processes that drive and underpin them, and involvingevery element of Australia’s biodiversity, in each part of the country. Sothis is an inspirational vision not just for the next few years, or decades,but for the next few centuries and beyond. (TWS n.d.-b, 28)

Apart from its aim to conserve existing ‘‘wilderness’’ areas, the project seeks totransform large expanses of predominantly agricultural land. In the continent’ssouthwest, a key focus is in linking existing protected areas with ‘‘restorationcorridors,’’ facilitating large-scale conservation of species across broad areas withoutthe constraints imposed by anthropogenic barriers (such as cereal monocultures).

Labeled ‘‘Gondwana Link,’’ one such project occurring in partnership withTWS thus aims to restore connectivity across an expansive region. In its public rhet-oric and on-ground practice, this Wild Country initiative emphasizes not only itsimpressive Green science advocacy credentials (cf. Yearley 1996), but also its broad-based community partnership approach. We focus here on one of the foundingpartner organizations, the Malleefowl Preservation Group (MPG)—a self-styled‘‘grass-roots’’ assembly formed in 1992 that provides a case study of local-levelresponses to ecological restoration ideals. Though it went on to become nationalin scope and boast a membership including both urban and rural dwellers, theMPG continued to identify strongly with the regional farming community who madeup its key support base. As with a wide range of studies of culturally significantanimal species—such as the Australian dingo (Peace 2001), wild horses in Australiaand the United States (Symanski 1994; Rikoon 2006), salmon in their northernhemisphere native setting and as introduced into southern Australia (Scarce 2000;Lien 2005), and seals in Finland (Bell et al. 2008)—the meanings attributed to theiconic malleefowl are instructive for our understanding of the sociocultural driversof public attitudes toward nature and notions of ecological restoration.

Efforts to preserve the malleefowl reflect a process of historical reevaluation of anative species. In recent years, many rural people in southwest Australia have cometo identify this bird as emblematic of the locations it inhabits; building large moundsfrom decaying vegetation, the bird is associated with farmers’ sense of place and,perhaps surprisingly, with the ongoing sustainability of farming enterprises. Protect-ing the malleefowl and its habitat has been embraced as consistent with restorationideals in a region with a history of some 150 years of agricultural development.Based on rural dwellers’ personal experiences and direct encounters (as withAmerican farmers’ identification with the plight of wild horses; Rikoon 2006,206), the bird’s survival has been mobilized as a metaphor for sustaining farmingas part of an environmentally responsible relationship with the land.

We find a mix of meanings circulating around the malleefowl. On the one hand,the MPG treats the bird as a flagship species for the semi-arid and extensively clearedwheatbelt ‘‘mallee country’’ (so named because of the preponderance of low-growing‘‘mallee’’ Eucalypts). The areas targeted for the establishment of habitat corridorsencompassed locations where there are known malleefowl breeding or suitable habi-tat sites, including areas that have been ‘‘covenanted’’ in order to preclude furthervegetation clearing. Landholders in the southwest have been reported as expressingpositive sentiments about conservation of relatively undisturbed ‘‘bush’’ (Rogan et al.2005, 156). Yet such commitments from growing numbers of farmers are best under-stood as a selective embracing of the Wild Country restorationist ideal. Thesestrategies take place in an extensively cleared agricultural landscape characterized

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by fragmented pockets of remnant bushland. And the majority of conservation-minded local farmers clearly remain committed to retaining productive enterprises—not in any general sense to returning cleared agricultural land to ‘‘bush.’’Consequently, a restorationist perspective in the pure form espoused by TWS, asdistinct from that being implemented by the MPG (and other groups) forming theGondwana Link partnership, would likely be perceived by farmers as possible onlyfor affluent urban dwellers who are not connected closely to the land and whoselivelihoods are not derived from the practicalities of everyday land use. Thus, thechallenge facing the Gondwana Link project is one of translating the TWS visioninto a workable arrangement that promotes the goal of ‘‘re-wilding,’’ while simul-taneously respecting farmer aspirations to maintain an important role as producersand environmental stewards.

In the words of one local woman in her 40s, she joined the MPG because ‘‘theywere down to earth, they’re a grass-roots organization, they’re not a bunch of urbangreenies.’’ As in a number of similarly documented cases (Yearley 2000), farmers areless than content with expert knowledge if it conflicts with local experience andunderstandings; like the British context, they construct themselves ‘‘as active ratherthan passive stewards of nature’’ in a fashion consistent with maintaining their ruralway of life (Harrison et al. 1998, 317). We find preservationist and re-wilding senti-ments alongside ongoing commitment to productive use of the land. Our researchsubjects among farmers clearly conceive the malleefowl both as a flagship speciesfor environmental revaluing and as commensurate with their own working orien-tation toward nature. This is evident from light-hearted suggestions that the mound-building bird is like a fellow energetic cultivator of the soil—‘‘you know, head downand bum up from dawn til dusk!’’—and hence symbolically aligned with the hard-working farming enterprise that encompasses what we may understand as ‘‘a bodilyknowledge of the natural world’’ (White 1996, 172).

The farmer perspective is further evident in the firmly held view that it is pro-ductive work-related experiential knowledge, rather than remotely derived scientificinformation, that best enables assessment of the health of both the bird and the landfor which it is deemed iconic. Hence, one person’s view, albeit expressed in unusuallyblunt fashion: ‘‘Most of them [visitors who are scientists] . . . don’t take in much [localknowledge].’’ Rather than in terms of ‘‘abstraction-oriented’’ perspectives on nature,the MPG typically assesses such restorationist proposals as Wild Country on thebasis of farmers’ long-term ‘‘production-oriented’’ (Skogen 2001, 223) associationswith, and close observations of, species such as the malleefowl. In the words of athird-generation farmer:

We’re strongly focused on habitat conservation and restoration. Andwe’re clear that if we can restore enough habitat to keep the malleefowlaround then there’s a good chance that we’ll get to keep farming in thiscountry.

In this view, the commensurability of farming with ecologically responsible landmanagement is evident through sightings of malleefowl around wheat spills and inpaddocks after harvest. There is recognition that agricultural production of grainindirectly augments available food, which boosts numbers in the ‘‘wild.’’ It wouldseem that the admired bird, though a symbol of the mallee wilderness, issimultaneously regarded as having become inextricably linked with and somewhat

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dependent on humans—not only for habitat protection, but also through humanintervention to ensure protection from predators such as foxes and competitors suchas rabbits (both of which are regarded as ‘‘ferals’’ that simultaneously threatenfarmers’ livelihoods).

In the midst of a broadly conceived ecological restoration project, then, farmersposition themselves as what some term pragmatic ‘‘grass-roots environmentalists’’—drawing contrasts between their efforts and those of urban ‘‘greenies.’’ Farmers asso-ciated with the MPG might be regarded as embracing an ‘‘alternative environment-alism’’ (Proctor 1996, 288) from that of TWS’s Wild Country vision. Those directingthe Gondwana Link partnership project acknowledge that TWS’s restorationist idealof returning bush to something approximating a pre-European impact ecologymakes little sense for the majority whose livelihood comes from continuing to man-age highly modified and semidomesticated forms of nature. Gondwana Link advo-cates and farmers in this study find common ground in the joint view that there isnonetheless scope for attempting to create a mosaic of land uses at various scales.

However, there is a marked philosophical difference in that many farmers remainuninterested in celebrating contemporary Aboriginal culture as holding any key tosuccessful relations with nature. As we have found for other sectors of the populationin this region (Trigger and Mulcock 2005), there is considerable ambiguity surround-ing societal perceptions of the Aboriginal minority’s (3.2% of the regional population;GSDC 2006, 12) relations with the land. While the broad Gondwana Link project hassought to emphasize the importance of Aboriginal interests, facilitating a ‘‘Recon-necting to Country’’ program for Indigenous people, many landholders appear eagerto assert their own sense of autochthony and connectedness with regional landscapes(Mulcock 2007). Consequently, they are hardly sympathetic when hearing anecdotalevidence that contemporary Aboriginal (Nyoongar) people continue to hunt suchlocal species as the malleefowl. While some farmer MPG members recall havingthemselves eaten the bird as children, they now suggest that the work they do is partlyto make amends for such environmental indiscretions.

The bird has remained a valued (if occasional) source of food for Nyoongars.Evidence on continuity of hunting practices given in native title claims over the pastdecade (Bennell v. State of Western Australia & Ors, [2006] FCA 1243, paras.650–684) indicates that consuming such native foods remains of considerable signifi-cance. Yet this use of bush resources for partial subsistence, and=or as a symbolicvehicle for the reproduction of a sense of ‘‘Indigenous’’ cultural identity (Palmer2004, 220–232), is quite different from the iconic meanings attributed to the mallee-fowl (and selected other fauna) among contemporary farmers. Certainly, in the viewof these (non-Aboriginal) landholders, it is theywho are now the true and appropriatecustodians of the malleefowl, and the role of Aboriginal people is ambiguous if notthreatening to the continued presence of this species in the landscape.

The Wild Country Vision for Northern Australia

In its promotional ‘‘Wild Country’’ publication, TWS has a section on ‘‘NorthernAustralia: The last wild frontier.’’ With a map indicating the vast expanses acrossthe north of the continent, this ‘‘immense region of 100 million hectares’’ is said tobe ‘‘one of the last great wild regions on Earth’’ (TWS n.d.-b, 21). However, despitecontaining ‘‘intact nature’’ in terms of vegetation cover, there are ‘‘significant emergingthreats’’; these include regional extinctions of small mammals in particular. Although

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there is recognized ‘‘strong interest’’ from ‘‘local Indigenous groups’’ in the GondwanaLink project in the south, for the north, Aboriginal people are a much larger pro-portion of the general population (e.g., 16.5% in the northwest Pilbara [Taylor andScambury 2005, 12], 30% across the Northern Territory [ABS 2008], and 60% in farnortheast Queensland [Taylor and Bell 2002, 16]). Known commonly as ‘‘TraditionalOwners,’’ Aboriginal people are described as much more central to the management ofnatural environments in the north, and are regarded emphatically by TWS as ‘‘signifi-cant land holders’’ with ‘‘strong aspirations to both live on and to manage their coun-try’’ (TWS n.d.-b, 21). While major tensions can certainly erupt between northernAboriginal groups and TWS, over such conservationist campaigns as the declarationof ‘‘Wild Rivers’’ on traditional lands (Langton 2009, 22), Aboriginal communities arerecognized as ‘‘retain[ing] a storehouse of knowledge that is crucial to the long-termmanagement and protection of this precious environment’’ (TWS n.d.-b, 23). Further-more, northern Australia is portrayed generally as providing us ‘‘with an opportunityto learn from the experiences of landmanagement in southern Australia’’ (TWS n.d.-b,21), with the implication being that the north is largely an unspoilt setting in whichboth autochthonous nature and culture remain predominant (cf. Trigger 2008, 630).

When we examine the discourses surrounding north Australian environments wefind an overriding theme of restoration as removal. In the south, with its longer historyof European settlement, there is an emphasized need to renature=renaturalizelandscapes by reintroducing or revitalizing populations of local native species (suchas the malleefowl). Strategies for ecological restoration across the ‘‘still wild’’ north,on the other hand, stress the necessity to remove what becomes understood as‘‘unnatural’’ from the landscape. Exotic species, especially those that are considered‘‘invasive,’’ must be eliminated in order to create or maintain the wilderness space forthe ‘‘natural’’ natives, namely, those species present prior to European incursion(Burgman and Lindenmayer 1998).

Our exemplar here is a notorious invasive vertebrate—the giant American toad(Bufo marinus), known by its distinctively Australian common name, the ‘‘canetoad.’’ Having been first released in the state of Queensland (in the east) in 1935,intended as a biological control agent for two species of indigenous beetle thenattacking sugar-cane crops (Lewis 1989, 56–57), large numbers of toads graduallymade their way across the northern part of the continent. In northern Queensland,TWS points out that cane toads (along with feral pigs) ‘‘are killing native animals’’(Schneiders, quoted in Bhandari 2007). As a comparator for the southern Australianmalleefowl we find this species an apt conceptual vehicle for exploring broad societalattitudes about maintaining the wild purity of the north.

The toad’s expansion westward has been accompanied by considerable publicconcern. Restoration discussions in relation to north Queensland and the NorthernTerritory focus on the need to remove the animal, while in the north of WesternAustralia the emphasis is on preventing or at least delaying its arrival. The cane toadis largely ‘‘denaturalized’’ in these discourses as part of attempts to garner widespreadcommunity support for its eradication. The toad’s poison glands make it highly toxicif ingested; reptiles, carnivorous marsupials, and birds that feed on frogs are athighest risk, and in some places certain species such as the northern quoll (Dasyurushallucatus) have been almost wiped out, according to government and media reports.The toad also impacts on native species by becoming a major competitor for food andshelter when present in large numbers (Department of Agriculture and Department ofConservation and Land Management [CALM] 2005; Dortch 2006).

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In comparison with the sentiments of restoring the iconic native malleefowl in thesouth, the rhetoric and imagery used in campaigns associated with cane toad manage-ment seek to mobilize cultural values related to removal of nonnative ‘‘nature.’’ Thelogo for the Western Australian ‘‘Stop The Toad Foundation’’ features an image of ablack monster toad, complete with threatening grimace, imposed across a map of thatstate. Similar imagery is evident from such newspaper stories as ‘‘Cane Toads of theApocalypse’’ (Mills 2004). In mid-2006 the animal had been located 110 km east ofthe Western Australia border. The urgent need to control toad movements is repeat-edly emphasized by people and organizations focused on the conservation of nativespecies. Considerable media coverage and a lot of fighting rhetoric around the raceto ‘‘stop the toad’’ have mobilized community members to participate in anti-toadactivities.

Western Australia’s Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) has a‘‘State Cane Toad Initiative’’ that involves a team of employees working to halt the‘‘invading front.’’ In the period from July 2005 until June 2006 this field operationresulted in the capture and disposal of more than 8,000 toads, 5,999 of which werecaught by hand in the dark of night (DEC 2006). The project includes the use ofsniffer dogs, helicopter surveillance if necessary, and efforts to develop genetic andviral technologies. The DEC’s 2006–2007 community awareness campaign featuresgreatly enlarged images of cane toad body parts and invites Western Australiansto ‘‘help us fight an alien invasion’’ by looking out for ‘‘deadly’’ aliens hiding in carsand hitchhiking across the border (DEC 2006).

Similarly, in the Northern Territory, colorful newspaper and magazine headlines,such as ‘‘T-Day: Attack of the Killer Cane Toads’’ and ‘‘Cane Toads Infiltrate OtherStates,’’ reflect a convergence of cultural stereotypes associated with ‘‘invasions’’ thatthreaten both lifestyle and the maintenance of wider environmental values (TerritoryWildlife Park 2005; ABC Television 2001). In these contexts, the toads are consist-ently represented in public discourses as out of place and undesirable, as repulsive‘‘infestations’’ that detract from the pleasure of experiencing the ‘‘natural’’ wildernessenvironment of northern Australia. The main ambiguity is the question of how best tokill toads, which somehow come to be seen as less than ‘‘animal’’ in light of their peststatus; many of the resulting suggestions would trigger public outrage if proposed foruse in the management of native or domesticated species. Examples range from blud-geoning them with cricket bats or golf clubs to freezing or anesthetizing them withhemorrhoid cream. In one case, there is a scheme where live toads can be exchangedfor beer vouchers (Anonymous 2005; Wilson 2006; Arvier 2006).

Nevertheless, as with restorationist ideals in the south, views regarding whatbelongs in the north are not without further complexities. Positive symbolic meaningsappear to be allowed the toad alongside its being condemned as bad for ‘‘nature.’’ InQueensland particularly, where toads have been present for over 70 years, theseanimals are not entirely without supporters. Accounts circulate of people keepingthem as pets, at least informally, by providing food and water and learning to recog-nize individual animals that are regular visitors to their gardens (Wilson 2005, 18).Scientists who work closely with toads can admit a grudging respect for their robust-ness, expressing compassion for them, while nevertheless developing a gene that willprevent the development of females and eventually result in an all male population(University of Queensland 2003). And there is the idea that cane toads assist in limit-ing the numbers of other species that are undesirable to humans and=or themselvesinvasive (Lewis 1989, 56–57; Wilson 2005). While likely indicative of a minority view,

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a letter to the editor of Western Australia’s daily newspaper (Bush 2006) defends thecane toad against its critics—denying that it risks causing the extinction of nativespecies, the latter ‘‘rapidly adapting to coexist with it,’’ and pointing out its usefulnessas a predator of ‘‘exotic honey bees.’’ The writer asks for opinions from ‘‘more objec-tive biologists,’’ suggesting discontent with predominant scientific pronouncements(cf. Yearley 2000).

Morris Gleitzman’s series of children’s books (Toad Rage 1999; Toad Heaven2001; Toad Away 2003) present sympathetic representations of cane toads. The onlinediscussion list for the Vegetarian and Vegan Society of Queensland includes a longthread stretching over two years (2004–2006) about the unnecessarily cruel treatmentof cane toads. While again doubtless indicative of a particular minority view, some 20online participants expressed their horror at the ways in which children and adultsappeared to enjoy killing toads in a variety of ‘‘sadistic’’ ways. Indeed, in Queensland,the National Trust accepted a nomination to add the toad to the official list of stateicons, although conservation-minded people raised objections that were also widelyreported (Trigger et al. 2008: 1278–1279).

The case of the cane toad in northern Australia enables us to make the point thateven ecologically destructive ‘‘aliens’’ can be ‘‘loved’’ for various reasons (Rotherham2005), including because they become ‘‘woven into people’s sense of place’’ (Warren2007, 434; Head and Muir, 2004). This can involve an experience of familiarityfacilitated by proximity, and perhaps at times an ironic symbolic celebration of whatauthoritative scientific and widespread cultural opinion says is an ugly, disgusting,and worthless animal. If there is self-denigrating humor present in some of theseexamples, it is nevertheless commensurate with an ironic acknowledgement of theanimal’s achieved place amid the nation’s fauna—regardless of scientific discoursesabout its negative ecological impact and the urgent need to eradicate the toad in orderto conserve or restore native northern Australian habitats and species. Indeed, at leastan inkling of consideration being given to whether toads ‘‘belong’’ in northern land-scapes is also present among Aboriginal traditional owner groups. Seton and Bradley(2004, 214) report a senior man commenting that the newly arrived animal is linkedspiritually to his native frog ‘‘dreaming’’; while his view was apparently not to prevailin light of the contrary assertion from kin that ‘‘this cane toad . . . has no [traditional]Law,’’ the matter will doubtless continue to be debated (Trigger 2008, 636).

Ecological Restoration and Human Agency

This discussion of two sets of ecological restoration discourses has sought to illustratethe complexities of societal responses to natural resource management in a relativelyyoung postsettler country. While TWS argues that people simply do not understandthe ecology of the Australian continent, our case studies take us to ways that citizensnevertheless attribute meanings to features of nature, and thereby to contestednotions about restoring and preserving it. Human agency, rather than being reducedto the negatively defined dimension of ‘‘impacts’’ on ecological integrity, therebyemerges in responses to restoration projects as a complex subject for scholarlyengagement (Hall 2005; Head 2007; Higgs 2003). Our task becomes unravelinghow, and if possible why, people embrace only partially the logic of ‘‘restoring’’ nat-ure to what science tells us is the ecologically appropriate ideal. In depicting local-level farmer senses of stewardship built around everyday working life, as well asthe suite of negative and positive symbolic meanings accorded to an invasive species,

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this article demonstrates how environmental concern is ‘‘socially embedded’’(Strandbu and Krange 2003, 180).

In southwest Australia, TWS’s ‘‘restoration’’ ideals are conceived in terms oftransforming established agricultural landscapes. This aspiration engages with farm-ers’ self-identities as producers and custodians of a valued rural heritage. On address-ing farmers’ everyday experience of domesticated environments that are workedintimately for economically productive purposes, we find that these rural residentsreinterpret the vision of restoration underlying the Wild Country initiatives. As hasbeen reported for their counterparts in the United Kingdom (Harrison et al. 1998,317), the farmers regard themselves as active stewards of nature, in a fashion com-mensurate with their practical and emotional attachments to a working rural lifestyle.Indeed, there is a sense in which farmers associate their asserted stewardship of‘‘nature’’ with strengthening their prospect of maintaining their way of life. Linkingtheir local knowledge to identification with nature experienced through work (cf.White 1996), and ambivalent about theoretical science (cf. Yearley 2000, 105), farm-ers assert a local vision that understands ecological diversity and the harvestableabundance of domesticated nature as commensurate ideals.

In the contrasting environments of northern Australia, restoration as such isaccorded less urgency than ‘‘conservation’’ or ‘‘preservation,’’ because pre-Europeanwildness is believed by many to still exist there. Some 150 years of commercial sheepand cattle herding and production, involving relatively small human populationscompared with the south, has resulted in a less obviously modified landscape sinceBritish settlement. Aboriginal stewardship of the land in northern Australia, thoughsubject to some contestation as to whether it is a practical ideal, is regarded quitewidely as a highly significant factor in any notion of sustaining an ecologically healthynatural environment (Head 2000, 214–234). There is some risk of romanticism ifchanging Indigenous cultures—involving, for example, willingness to embrace speciesregarded by science as inimical to appropriately restored nature (Franklin 2006,166–192; Trigger 2008)—are naively assumed to necessarily represent a more‘‘natural’’ mode of engagement with the land (Anderson 1989; Sackett 1991). Never-theless, the restorationist theme of the north as still wild, in terms of ‘‘native’’ nature,is paralleled by widespread assumptions about autochthonous culture, with thelatter defined largely in terms of Aboriginal presence and connectedness with anancient past.

The case materials presented have focused attention on assumptions andattitudes about what ‘‘belongs’’ across an ecologically diverse large continent witha recent history of European colonisation. We have considered the recovery of aniconic species of ground-dwelling bird in southern Australia, and the removal of canetoads that are demonized as highly alien by most yet regarded as historically (orpotentially) familiar by others, across the north. These cases illustrate diverse physicaland symbolic properties being accorded to what we might term charismatic fauna—species that provide ‘‘a metaphor to think about otherwise complex environmentalissues’’ (Einarsson 1993, 79).

We find both ‘‘native’’ (the malleefowl) and ‘‘exotic’’ (the cane toad) categoriesof animal replete with conceptual and symbolic preoccupations arising from thehistorico-cultural backgrounds and societal locations of Australians. Farmers inthe south accord the mound-building malleefowl symbolic meaning as emblematicof their own asserted closeness to and residential emplacement on the land. Citizensacross the north embrace science-based negative portrayals of introduced cane toads,

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yet where they have become familiar over some 70 years, there can also be an ironicacceptance of this invasive animal, seemingly based on its proximity. If there is a riskthat ‘‘alien’’ species in developed countries have come to be constructed as the ‘‘newvermin’’ (Smout 2003), our case materials also show that ‘‘wildlife xenophobia’’(Seddon 2005, 7–9) will not be the sole driver of societal responses to restorationistaims. Research findings of the kind reported here thus confirm that social scienceand humanities scholars are well placed to contribute to the vigorous debate aboutthe native=alien species distinction in ecology (O’Brien 2006; Warren 2007; 2008;Richardson et al. 2008) and the challenges in arriving at management decisions thatare both ecologically and culturally acceptable.

In depicting discourses of contestation and ambiguity surrounding appropriaterestoration ideals, we should note that it is not our intention to suggest that conser-vation scientists and the organizations with which they collaborate are lacking inrigor or focus. On the contrary, the vigor with which such issues are debated is testa-ment to the vibrancy of the science, and to the difficulties of making managementdecisions when knowledge is often partial and desired outcomes urgent. Rather, weseek to show how both popular and scientific discourses about nature occur withina complex cultural context and are produced by personal experience and emotionalresponse as well as by science-based evaluations of environmental change (Milton2002). The point we believe ought be taken seriously among natural science colleaguesis that the social sciences and humanities thus have a significant role in empatheticallyexamining the human agency that underpins attempts at dealing with environmentalissues. Given the centrality of morally loaded notions of ‘‘nativeness’’ to definitions ofecological ‘‘restoration,’’ historically young settler-descendant societies such asAustralia—where hybridity in both nature and society can be understood asemergent—are a particularly rich arena for relevant cultural analysis.

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