Watching the Grass Grow

Abstract

Invasive plants are adversely affecting environmental and production values around the world. While invasive plant management can be relatively straightforward if there are sufficient resources and adequate knowledge, at times species exceed the capacities of land managers, creating management uncertainty that requires adaptive and novel responses to protect economic and ecological assets. Drawing on empirical research with rural landholders living with the invasive plant African lovegrass (Eragrostis curvula) on the southeast coast of Australia, we detail how these landholders learn and develop management responses in the absence of formal institutional knowledge. While the relationship between expert and stakeholder knowledge is critical in the development of management actions, we turn our attention to the role of other-than-human actors within the learning process. Building from recent insights on non-human agency and environmental learning, we articulate a relational learning approach to illuminate the distinctive capacities of African lovegrass in affecting how landholders learn and manage their land. Given recent focus on how landholders live with invasive species, we argue that treating non-humans as stakeholders in the learning process allows for a more detailed understanding of how local knowledge is formed and shared in order to develop the capacity to live with African lovegrass.