The native bushland and wildlife of Australia's Northern Territory is under double threat but it's not a raging bushfire or plague of locusts ravaging the countryside. Instead thousands of square kilometres of the Top End's most beautiful and environmentally precious countryside is under attack from inconspicuous enemies.
It may sound like something from a bad Crocodile Dundee sequel, but the demand for didgeridoos from tourists visiting Australia has grown so great, and the industry so lucrative, that native trees are being illegally felled at an alarming rate to make the wind instruments.
At the same time, the relentless march north of millions of poisonous cane toads has already had devastating effects on the wildlife in the region. But most worrying is the fact that the world-renowned Kakadu National Park, 250 kilometres east of Darwin, is now under threat.
The extent of the didgeridoo-related tree-felling in Northern Territory bushland only became apparent in the aftermath of the Sydney Olympics last September. Although there had already been massive demand for didgeridoos among tourists, and illegal felling has always been a problem, once sports fans arrived, demand for the aboriginal instruments became insatiable. Now massive tracts of the Northern Territory have been cleared, as members of the indigenous community and others strive to make a fast buck.
The traditional home of the didgeridoo is in the north of the country, where nearly, the metre-long, pipelike flute has played an important role in many indigenous ceremonies.
It is made from the trunk of a eucalyptus tree, which has been hollowed out by termites, usually white ants. The insects eat the heartwood of the tree and also use it as building material for their nests. Within indigenous communities, trunks will be chosen only if they have been sufficiently hollowed by the ants. Exterior bark layers are broken off and any remaining portions of the ants' nest are cleared. A mouthpiece made from beeswax is often fixed to the smaller end of the hollow pipe and the instrument is then hand-painted.
In recent times, this traditional indigenous craft has resulted in mass eucalyptus clearing. Trunks are being hollowed using power tools before being given a quick coat of varnish and then shipped to Sydney or some other tourist hub where they can fetch more than $250 each. Conservationists are concerned that this illegal trade is wiping out vast tracts of native bushland and destroying the homes of native animals.
Very few of those now clearing the bush for didgeridoos are working with permits, according to Josh Fornea, a PhD student researching sustainable harvesting on behalf of the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission (PWC).
"I spoke to a few of the didgeridoo shops in Darwin and one of them told me they sold 9,000 last year alone," he says. "Parks and Wildlife issued permits to make 3,000 didgeridoos across all of the Northern Territory."
Worst affected are the Jawoyn lands surrounding the town of Katherine, about 300km south of Darwin. No permits have been issued for the area and yet tens of thousands of trees have been cleared. You do not have to venture too far from the highway to see the damage: "If you drive off the Stuart Highway a little way, you see literally hundreds of trees with missing branches or just cut down completely," says Fornea.
The PWC began sponsoring Fornea's research in the last 12 months and is now considering developing a resource management plan that would include a trial tagging system for retail didgeridoos. "The tagging system would help us determine how many and where they're coming from," says Fornea.
He believes the instruments should also be marked with a tag of authenticity so tourists know whether they are paying for the genuine article, hand-made by indigenous Australians, or a mass-produced imitation.
"Hopefully, authenticity tags will be introduced to indicate that a didgeridoo not only meets parks and wildlife sustainability criteria but also that it was harvested or painted by aboriginal people."
Elsewhere in the state, however, another more deadly enemy - cane toads - will not be controlled by merely tightening the rules. The toads are not native to Australia but were introduced in 1935 at Gordonvale, North Queensland, in a failed attempt to control cane beetles. They have since spread through Queensland, the Northern Territory and upper New South Wales.
These are not toads as Irish people know them. Most of the wildlife in Australia is armed with all kinds of nasty surprises and cane toads are no different. They boast two tiny venom pouches around their shoulders, the poisonous contents of which they can squirt up to two metres if they feel distressed enough. The venom is also continuously secreted from pores all over the toads' bodies and any animal coming into contact with it will die within 15 minutes. If digested the consequences are the same - almost instant death for animals (and blindness for humans).
In April, the first cane toads were discovered in Kakadu National Park, realising long-held fears that the park's unique blend of wildlife would not escape the relentless march northwards of the deadly pests. Covering 20,000 square kilometres, Kakadu is on , and its wetlands are on the United Nations list of Wetlands Of International Importance. The park is home to tens of thousands of species, from the tiniest termites to some of the world's biggest fresh water crocodiles. Any unsettling by the poisonous cane toad of the environmental equilibrium here will be devastating. So far the omens are not good.
Barely a week after their presence was confirmed in Kakadu, eight freshwater crocodiles were found floating belly-up just a few kilometres south of the park at Katherine Gorge, after having either eaten the toads or been sprayed with their deadly venom.
Parks Australia North is conducting two cane toad programmes to educate people about toads or toadlets "hitch-hiking" on camping gear and vehicles and the authorities in the region are also funding research to develop a biological control of the animal, says Terry Bailey, acting manager of Kakadu National Park.
But with each female toad capable of producing up to 30,000 eggs every month, he concedes population control will probably be impossible. In two more years, the toads are expected to have colonised most of the park. The situation is already one of damage control, but it is anyone's guess what form those controls will take once the poisonous toads have established themselves in the park.