Paper short abstract:

Through an exploration of human relationships with feral pigs in Cape York, this paper will explore how introduced species are understood by land managing groups in the region to describe and analyse the contested, overlapping and ambiguous ways that hybrid landscapes are cultivated and organised.

Paper long abstract:

Weed and feral animal control comprises much of the work that land managers in Cape York do. Different land managers target different introduced species for control in the areas for which they have responsibility, and the ways that certain species are understood as more or less problematic indicates the ways in which land managers understand and seek to order landscapes and reinforce their sense of belonging in it. In this paper, I describe and discuss the various methods used by land managers to attempt to wrangle invasive species, in order to tease out the changing cultural and social values that shape the goals and practices of the main land managing parties in the Cape. The control of various introduced species brings to the fore questions around how species are categorised as “native” or “invasive”, belonging or not belonging. Particular species disrupt the assumed correlation between nativeness and belonging and come to represent different things for different people. Through a discussion of the various positions that feral pigs occupy—as “killable” pests, food resources and pets—I will explore how Cape York emerges as a “hybrid landscape”, rife with “feral dynamics”. By examining how fauna and flora are understood and categorised by the various land managing groups in south-east Cape York, I will show how landscapes are cultivated in contested, overlapping and ambiguous ways.