Bruce Maslin


Mulga

Bruce Maslin, Senior Research Scientist at Western Australia’s Department of Environment and Conservation has a compulsion to understand mulga. Which is why he is heading up a major three-year scientific study into providing a reliable means of identifying mulga species and clarifying patterns in its variation.

“Mulga is the Holy Grail of Acacias taxonomy,” Bruce says with a grin, by which he means that, when it comes to understanding and classifying mulga, it’s a hard ask.
 
“Not only is mulga beautiful when it blossoms into bright yellow, pipe-cleaner shaped flowers,” Bruce explains, “but it dominates at least 20 per cent of the landmass of Australia. It is especially common in arid inland areas; exactly the kind of places where Rio Tinto has many of its operations.”

“Yet, though it’s prolific, there’s a lot we don’t know about mulga. There are ten species, with quite a number as yet undescribed, while common mulga alone has ten varieties. So not only are the problems of classification complex, but we’ll need to employ genetic techniques such as DNA fingerprinting and sequencing to understand what causes all this diversity.”

Much of Bruce’s time over the next three years will be spent out in the field, almost all of it in WA including the Pilbara, because, he says, “this is a group of plants which it is much easier to understand out in the field.”

So important is the need to understand mulga that scientists, including a geneticist from as far afield as the University of Iowa in the USA and an anatomist from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, as well as from Western Australia’s Department of Environment and Conversation, are participating.

“Understanding mulga means that we can manage the land and regulate its use, its development, and ultimately its rehabilitation, far more adroitly,” says Bruce.

And that, like the Holy Grail, is worth striving for.