Making Ecologies on Private Land by Benjamin Cooke & Ruth Lane

Author:Benjamin Cooke & Ruth Lane
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030312183
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

2 The Temporality of People–Plant Relationships

The form and arrangement of heavily modified rural-amenity ecologies presented the perfect canvas for many landholders to further their aspirations for ‘bringing back’ native ecologies to the landscape. Nearly half the participants stated explicitly that they thought their in-migration would allow the return of native ecologies to a rural landscape that had long been ‘over-worked’ through farming practices. Alan’s declaration that, ‘people spent decades clearing the land here and we’ll spend decades revegetating it’, captured the broad redemptive aspiration that many participants brought with them to their new surroundings. This number is perhaps not surprising when the majority of participants expressing this sentiment were interviewed in 2016 and were part of EcoTender, which often funded landscape restoration efforts. However, our exploration of their efforts to bring these imported aspirations to fruition revealed the extent to which landholders are not the only actors contributing to the making of new ecologies. Throughout this section, we heavily foreground the role of plant agency by showing the influence of plants in disrupting and re-orientating the ecological aspirations of human actors through time (Head & Atchison, 2008).

Despite being less than a decade old, the Sugar Gums (Eucalyptus cladoclyx) that are establishing in Trevor’s paddock are beginning to express a characteristic form. The dense timber contained in their single straight trunks—abnormally straight for eucalypt species—are already supporting dense, deep-green foliage. Combined with the wide, outward growth habit of the limbs, the foliage helps to buffer the wind that blows across the open grassy plains. The relative flourishing of the Sugar Gums during this period of time is notable, in comparison to the fortunes of other species over the same period, as south-eastern Australia experienced a particularly harsh period of drought during the early 2000s. Endemic to regions of South Australia notable for a dry climate, Sugar Gums possess a tolerance to drought that is distinguished even amongst eucalypt species. Indeed, the contrasting fortunes of different eucalypt species during the drought, reflected by the death of at least one of the locally endemic mature Yellow Gums (Eucalyptus leucoxylon) in the foreground of Fig. 1, reveal how Sugar Gums came to occupy a section of Trevor’s paddock.

Fig. 1Sugar Gums (Eucalyptus cladoclyx), located rear centre and right of the image, are beginning to fill the open paddock space in the foreground, that had initially set aside for the natural regeneration of the local the Yellow Gum Species (Eucalyptus leucoxylon)

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