Lantana, people, and wildlife in southern India (field trip report)

October 6, 2014
A lantana-lined path in the BRT Hills

A lantana-lined path in the BRT Hills

The thorny bush Lantana camara, with its attractive pink, yellow, and orange flowerlets, covers vast areas of forest understory, fallow lands, and hedges in the hilly mountains fringing the southern end of Karnataka state, India. These upland areas are also home to several marginalized cultural groups (‘scheduled tribes’, or ‘indigenous people’) as well as a diversity of wildlife – elephants, tigers, bears, gaur, three kinds of deer, monkeys, boars, wild dogs, leopards. On our recent scoping trip to the Biligiri Ranganaswamy Hills some four hour south of Bangalore, we discovered that there were at least three ways one could talk about the lantana situation, each following familiar tropes: as a story of invasion, of dispossession, or of creative redemption. Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Development, Fire, Introduced and Invasive Plants, Political ecology, Research | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by christiankull

Peatland deforestation for acacia in Indonesia

September 27, 2014

Oil palm gets all the attention, but what about acacia?  Oil palm has become synonymous with deforestation in Indonesia and resulting losses of orang-utan habitat, increased carbon emissions, and unhealthy smoke haze.  But equally large areas of peatland are being converted to pulp and paper plantations of tropical salwood wattles like Acacia crassicarpa and A. magnum, trees that now cover many millions of hectares in South East Asia.  In Riau province, Sumatra, the two big pulp mills (operated by Asia Pulp and Paper [APP] and Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd [APRIL]) have around 75 and 45 per cent (respectively) of their pulp plantations located on peatland. The ways in which such forestry concessions have been granted and implemented have inspired dramatic protests: 28 residents of the Meranti Islands in Riau Province stitched their lips shut while demonstrating in front of government buildings in Jakarta (Jakarta Post; Transparency Int.). Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Acacia, Conservation, Development, Political ecology, Research, Sustainability | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by christiankull

Hello Lausanne!

September 22, 2014

I’m very excited to announce that in January 2015 I will be taking up a position as Professeur ordinaire at the Université de Lausanne, or “Unil”, on the shores of Lake Geneva, in Switzerland.   Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Teaching | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by christiankull

Reflections on invasion biology

September 9, 2014

Invasion biology has been a remarkably active branch of the life sciences in the past two decades.  My itinerary first crossed this field when I noticed, at the time of my move to Melbourne, that the ‘precious’ mimosas (acacias, wattles) of the Madagascar highlands were called ‘green cancer’ in South Africa, and in both cases were introduced from Australia.  It was quite surprising to discover that this shrubby tree, so appreciated by Malagasy farmers (as a resource) and environmental managers (as ‘regreening’ barren lands), was seen so negatively across the Mozambique Channel.  This observation led to a research program that (1) opened a window for me to learn about and consider the field of invasion biology, and (2), serendipitously, to collaboration with ecologist Jacques Tassin at the French research institute Cirad.  I comment on some of the recent fruits of both in this blog.

The South African approach to alien plants. Cartoon from environmental education material collected in 2006 (thanks to Rémy Kinna).
The South African approach to alien plants. Cartoon from environmental education material collected in 2006 (thanks to Rémy Kinna).

In a just-published viewpoint in the journal Land Use Policy [free official pdf until Oct. 6;  pdf; link], Jacques and I argue that Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Acacia, Book Review, Introduced and Invasive Plants | Tagged: , | Permalink
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Field trip report Madagascar 2014

July 17, 2014

I recently returned from my 11th trip to Madagascar in 22 years. My main goal was to scope out potential field sites for an ARC-supported research project entitled “A weed by any other name? Comparing local knowledge and uses of environmental weeds around the Indian Ocean” (with collaborators Priya Rangan, Charlie Shackleton, and Nitin Rai). I took two week-long trips from the capital, first south to my old highland stomping grounds around Antsirabe and Ambositra, and second east to the rice bread-basket of Lake Alaotra, the rainforest escarpment at Andasibe and Beforona, and the coastal plains and hills around Vatomandry. It was also a good opportunity to renew personal and professional connections, including at the University of Antananarivo’s forestry school (ESSA-Forêts), where I was invited to give a presentation. What did I find?

Neo-Australian landscapes along RN11a in eastern Madagascar: Grevillea, Eucalyptus, Acacia...

Neo-Australian landscapes along RN11a in eastern Madagascar: Grevillea, Eucalyptus, Acacia…

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2 Comments | Acacia, Introduced and Invasive Plants, Madagascar, Research | Permalink
Posted by christiankull

Biodiversity conservation in a developing country: new book

May 9, 2014

I’ve finally received my copy of the new edited book Conservation and Environmental Management in Madagascar, edited by Ivan Scales of Cambridge University. This will be a fantastic resource for scholars of Madagascar new and old, as well as more broadly. It includes chapters on a full array of topics: on biodiversity, palaeoecology, and archaeology, on the measurement and causes of deforestation, on environmental politics, policies, programs, and projects, and on different economic development-and-conservation solutions, often (but not always) from a political ecology perspective, broadly construed.

Cover of Scales 2014 Conservation and Environmental Management in Madagascar

Highlights for me in the book – which also has two of my own chapters – include: Read the rest of this entry »

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Why we can’t say Madagascar is 90% deforested

April 25, 2014

If stated often enough, a fact becomes truth. That seems to be the case with the oft-repeated figure that “Madagascar has lost 90% of its original forest cover”. The problem, as Bill McConnell of Michigan State University and I point out in a letter just published in Science magazine, is that this fact cannot be proven.

Slash-and-burn tavy clearing near Andapa, Madagascar © 1994 C. Kull

Slash-and-burn tavy clearing near Andapa, Madagascar (photo by C. Kull)

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5 Comments | Conservation, Madagascar, Political ecology, Research | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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A space for interdisciplinarity

March 31, 2014

Recently, several geography programs I am familiar with – notably my own at Monash – have been in the throes of administrative reshuffling and identity crises.  In written submissions, hallway chats, and meeting room polemics we have all declared, at one point or another, that the strength of Geography is its interdisciplinarity, its crossing of bridges between the natural and the social, between science and arts.  We have also declared that the integrity of the discipline depends on it staying together as one, even though a climate modeller will have different needs than an analyst of urban indigenous social movements. Read the rest of this entry »

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Vegetation fire and cultural landscapes in Fiji

March 8, 2014

There are three main types of fire in Fiji.  Sugar cane farmers burn their fields to facilitate hand harvesting.  Village farmers clear forest plots, fallow fields, and secondary vegetation for diverse crops using fire.  And finally, the fires that cover the most ground are those set in the grasslands of the drier, lee-side of the islands.  And of course there are occasionally fires that cause trouble – late last year I saw a major fire burning through the pine plantations in southeastern Viti Levu.

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Is everything becoming a ‘Science’? Next up: geographical science, poverty reduction science…

November 25, 2013

Is everything becoming a ‘Science’ these days? Land change science, sustainability science, conservation science, invasion science… what is behind all these new labels? This phenomenon seems to have somewhat contradictory drivers: one is an appeal to interdisciplinarity and crossing the natural-social divide; the other is a rhetorical or strategic retreat to the authority of Science-with-a-capital-S. The consequence is a number of approaches claiming intellectual territory and scientific, ‘apolitical’ authority and largely shutting the doors for reflective, interpretive, and critical social science and humanities approaches. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Research, Sustainability | Tagged: , | Permalink
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