Buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris and other related species) is a high-impact environmental grass species and the greatest invasive species threat to environment and culture across the central deserts. Buffel promotes larger, more intense and more frequent wildfires. It has already transformed millions of hectares of habitat into a fire-promoting monoculture and risks invading up to 68 percent of the continent. It impacts dozens of threatened species, monocrops landscapes, degrades soils, is a public safety threat, suppresses wildflowers, bushfoods and bush medicines, significantly impacting First Nations cultures, sacred sites and inter-generational knowledge sharing, as well as affecting public safety threat, the tourism industry, human health, social wellbeing, essential infrastructure and economic diversification.
Buffel grass was implicated in the horrific Maui fires in Hawaii in August 2023, which resulted in over 100 fatalities. Homes and dwellings were also lost in Alice Springs in 2023. The existential threat posed by buffel grass invasion is real and known.
A Weed of National Significance listing is a message of hope, that action on buffel grass is essential to conserve this continent's inland waterways, landscapes, species, First Nations cultures and remote communities. There are a myriad of opportunities to significantly advance the management of buffel grass across the continent and a Weed of National Significance listing will turbo-charge research, national coordination and resourcing as well as on-ground management.