The Northern Territory government has established a technical working group to assess the impacts of buffel grass and look at how it is to be managed across Central Australia.
Buffel grass was introduced to the territory in the 1960s as a pasture for the region's cattle industry and is still highly valued by some pastoralists as fodder as well as for erosion control and dust suppression.
However, the spread of the grass has caused environmental groups to raise concerns about its tendency to become a monoculture as it chokes out native grasses, and for its role in heightening wildfire intensity.
The working group will be made up of people with expertise in buffel grass management and will also assess whether the grass should be declared a weed, as it is in South Australia.
The Department of Environment's Maria Wauchope said buffel grass had become a hot topic in the past 12 months, particularly after higher-than-normal rainfall caused the plant's significant spread.
"We want to look at all aspects, because we see that there are benefits to buffel, but there are also negative impacts," she said.
"We need to be sure that declaring it [a weed] is the right way to go.
"There might be other options available, such as under the Bushfires Management Act or Pastoral Land Act, so we just want to make sure that if we head down that path, it's the right path to take."
A step in the right direction
Arid Lands Environment Centre's Alex Vaughan said the establishment of the working group was "a small step in the right direction".
"The impacts of buffel grass are disproportionately negative," he said.
"It impacts visitors in national parks, it impacts the tourism industry, it impacts cultural values and First Nations people."
Mr Vaughan said buffel grass created hotter, larger and more frequent fires across the landscape.
"Buffel grass is clearly a major public safety issue.
"It's the greatest invasive species threat to environment and culture.
"We've seen that houses have been lost in Alice Springs rural area recently … we've got bushfire smoke around town from buffel grass related fires."
Eradication not so easy
NT Cattleman's Association chief executive Will Evans said it was important the working group didn't just consider "one species of grass in an isolated context".
"They need to consider the broader framework and the history and ability of the territory to actually be able to beat weed threats," he said.
"We have 51 class-A and class-B declared weeds in the Northern Territory.
"In the history of all of the investment we have put into them, we have been able to eradicate precisely zero of those weeds.
"It's really important the group considers what we are able to do. What are effective management tools, what works now and how do we actually get to a point where we can address some of this community concern?"
Mr Evans said grazing was a good mitigation for weed control in the territory.
"I don't think anyone is going to be advocating for hundreds of thousands of litres of herbicides to be sprayed across Central Australia — the largest organic production region for cattle in Australia," he said.
The technical working group is expected to report back to the Northern Territory government later this year.
