"We've lost the cane toad war"

[JasonL]

The QLD Gov. had people looking on how they effected the environment in Hawaii, where they had also been released, it was going to be a great thing!. The only problem was the environment in Hawaii is a tad different to Northern Australia, and some of the people looking into it might of not seen through the smoke screen. in place by the cane industry at the time. Remember, in 1935, snakes weren't something to protect.

 

[Charlie V]

Bounties are stupid and counterproductive, do a search and you will find it has been brought up countless times before.

Outside the cites more intellegent solutions need to be found as killing a few (1-1000etc.) generally wont make ANY differance at all.

I look at it this way:

With a $1 per head bounty, a person could easily make $100 a week (thats only an afternoon or two of clubbing). Thats 5,200 dead toads per year.

By, say, 10,000 people? As a conservative estimate? Lets be generous and say 50,000 people across the NT and QLD decide to make a bit of extra cash.

Thats 52,000,000 to 260,000,000 dead toads every year.

Expensive, yeah. But those sort of figures sound pretty effective to me.

 

[waruikazi]

You lot are on crack if you think the taod patrols aren't doing anything! While cane toads occupy most of the land all the way to the WA border, because of the efforts of toad busters the suburbs of darwin are pretty well clear (atleast mine is) of toads. We were told 3 years ago that we would be overrun by them, yet i have not seen or heard one in the burbs. Which means, beleive it or not, we still have habitats where the panoptes, frillies, kooksburras and all the other animals can live and breed.

 

[RevDaniel]

Wish that we could do more. Hope they dont make their way down here

 

[beesagtig]

@ whoever said the thing about o well a few natives, cant be bothered to look

How can you say that?

 

[Dodie]

A little different but as my boss says at work - If you don't pull out one weed then it will set seed and drop 100, those 100 will drop another 100 = 10, 000...10, 000 x 100 = 1 000 000 and so on..

I remember reading an article a little while back where there was thousands of marijuana plants growing wild along the Hunter Valley - Government came in and what do you know they got rid of ALL of them...

The government could be doing a hell of a lot more, even though we may never rid this country of the toads..we certainly could clean up most of them to get the native population thriving

 

[MrBredli]

Time to build the toad-proof fence i reckon!

 

[Radar]

Its actually amazing how little we have to reduce the adult mortality by to wipe out the species. I haven't got the maths on me (its buried in lecture notes somewhere from years ago), but according to one of the nations top amphibian biologists, something like 99.3% of cane toads don't make it to maturity.........which means if we can increase morality just that little bit further it could actually have a significant effect.
Some mates and I raised $300 in one night a few years back by capturing toads off his 10 acre hillside property (with a few very small wet soaks) by selling anything big enough to a local taxidermist (to stuff) and killing anything too small. There was a pretty noticable difference between the number present before and the number present for a few months afterwards. I say keep up the physical control.

 

[Hetty]

Time to build the toad-proof fence i reckon!

I was thinking the same thing.

Anyone know if they've made it through the rabbit fence?

 

[Jen]

A bounty sounds like a good idea, but people would just keep and breed the darn things to keep a steady income. We should organise an APS toad hunt, person with the most cane toads gets a gtp

 

[alex_c]

or how about we use the military to go through areas killing them or actually use prisoners for something useful.

 

[JasonL]

Well we did so well with rabbits didn't we? two major virus's, pelt hunting, fences ect. Kick and scream all you want, but nothin will get rid of the toad.

 

[Hetty]

The fence worked though didn't it?

 

[adbacus]

Whilst I don't like the toads, mother nature is helping to a degree. From a`report I heard a few several months ago, the process of natural selection is working. For example RBBS's that survived have been breeding smaller headed snakes that aren't able to swallow the toads.

From history, the CSIRO actually disagreed with the government in releasing the toad.

 

[JasonL]

I really don't beleive that RRB head thing, as they could still eat the millions of smaller toads around, and they only need to hold the toads in their mouths for a minute for them to die.

 

[addy]

TERRITORIANS dutifully killing cane toads to stop their spread could be wasting their time, a new report says.

Report author Professor Tony Peacock, chief executive of the Invasive Animals Co-operative Research Centre at the
University of Canberra, says killing the toads is not stopping them.

That is more than likely very true....but i'm sure it good air riffle target practice.
and if they put a bounty on the cane toads head, paying for each dead toad..i reckon the cane toad would be extinct in Australia within years.

 

[cris]

Addy, as Gordo and i have pointed out it isnt a waste of time, it does work to some extent especially in highly populated(human) areas. Just because killing them isnt going to stop them spreading on the "fronts" dosnt mean it cant big a big difference locally. Although i do agree they are great target practice where guns can be used. I suggest you do a search and read previous threads about the bounty along with others i have typed the same thing that many times im not going to do it again.

 

[ihaveherps]

It is way over-due that some form of biological control measure has been developed, the powers that be have seriously dropped the ball.

In Africa there was a rather sucessful biological control program undertaken to cut the numbers of tetse flys, responsible for sleeping sickness. They genetically engineered a hundreds of thousands of sterile male flys, which due to the competitive nature of their mating rituals increased the competition for females, which in turn reduced the numbers of larvae produced. This method was used in conjunction with other measures, as systems such as these can never be 100% sucessful, but can put a rather large dent in the populations.

Even though it would be an expensive project to undertake, as mapping the toad genome would be rather expensive, a simple recessive sex linked trait would do the job nicely in the case of the toad. A defective recessive gene somehow linked to the "x" chromosome could have a devestating effect on the toads. Even a relatively small introducion with mutant males would slowly but surely get the job done.

 

[cris]

It is way over-due that some form of biological control measure has been developed, the powers that be have seriously dropped the ball.

There has actually been a fair bit of work done trying to do this, they just havnt come up with anything safe enough yet, keep in mind the cane toad itself is a biological control measure.

http://www.csiro.au/multimedia/CaneToadVirus.html
http://www.csiro.au/science/CaneToadResearch.html

This is the sort stuff i want to get into in the future.

There is also something causing a lot of sick toads but i cant find the link about it, i have been noticing it in a few of the ones around here.

 

[slim6y]

Ok - firstly I'd like to know what would happen if, just for imaginations sake, all the toads all of a sudden dissapeared and they were all gone (even if it was a gradual process over a few years).

Now - some good things the toads have done is in fact biologically controlled many other creatures, from their tadpoles eating mosquito larvae to them finishing off moths and beetles that damage crops.

Ironically, the cane beetle isn't one of them!

So will we see an influx in other pests (I know they will eventually balance out - but initially there'll be a huge influx of other pests).

And who are these people actually complaining about the toads - they're 'us' the people who care for the natives. Do the cane farmers care? In fact do any orchardists care? In fact do any farmers care?

So why should the government care? Is there any financial gain to be made by having them removed?

A government forced by fiscal policy won't spend money on something that is probably in the long run benefiting the country by limiting farmers expenditure on pesticides (purely unsubstantiated facts here by the way - I doubt farmers will buy less pesticides, but it's the point I am trying to make).

And - can't monitors eat small toads and survive?

Anyhow - we should do our bit no matter what - and the government will continue to do nothing.

But doing something is still better than doing nothing. And each night I will toad hunt, catch, freeze and dispose of....

Those who continually play golf with them, are only doing half the job and tend to have that narrow minded mentality that torturing something because it's a pest doesn't matter (oh it's only a toad...).

All life, no matter how pesty, should be treated with respect, and if to be killed, promptly and painlessly is the only way. Relocating them with force (golf clubbing) probably kills around 50% and injures others leaving them vulnerable to being eaten by birds, lizards, snakes etc and then killing that animal!

Disposal is just as important as the dispatching of the toads life!

Wrap in plastic bag, freeze, then dispose of in the plastic bag in landfill.