The Australian rangelands are spatially complex, variable to the point where reactions to disturbance are often unpredictable, and generally uneconomic to rehabilitate once damaged. Hence some areas of the rangelands are inherently prone to degradation through management mistakes. Further, economically optimum short-term stocking rates are often well above what the environment seems able to tolerate in the long-term. Because pastoralists rationally discount future production, it pays them to graze heavily; bur this is ultimately an institutional problem, not the fault of the pastoralists.