NATIONAL POST (Toronto, Ontario) 06 December 04 Darwin braces for onslaught of cane toads: Fat, ugly poisonous (Jill Jolliffe)
Darwin, Australia (AFP): They are fat, ugly, poisonous and they are on the march, heading for this tropical northern outpost in their thousands with their expected arrival this monsoon season representing a looming sci-fi nightmare for residents.
Worse, they are unstoppable and breed twice a year at the rate of 10,000 to 20,000 eggs a time.
Meet bufo marinus, otherwise known as the cane toad, an introduced species brought from South America in 1935 to control cane-field pests in the eastern state of Queensland to which they were confined for most of their 70 years in Australia.
But they have left their adoptive habitat and are now an hour's drive south of Darwin.
Having no natural predators in Australia, they have spread unchecked to the stage where they are now considered one of the country's most noxious pests.
"Cane toads are coming, they are fat, ugly and poisonous," a Northern Territory government bulletin warns householders, adding that they will kill many animals in their path, including fish, crocodiles, snakes, goannas and quolls, a native marsupial.
They may not have the fire power of some of Australia's better known nasties, such as snakes, sharks, crocodiles or poisonous spiders, but the cane toad is a threat even to them.
They squirt a powerful poison from glands behind the ears, which can kill domestic pets as well as native animals. Park rangers have found the carcasses of crocodiles, quolls, dingos, snakes and goannas that they say have died from eating cane toads.
The Northern Territory government's Parks and Wildlife Web site advises residents on how to catch the slimy pests and kill them humanely by placing them in a plastic shopping bag and then in the freezer.
Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is working on a biological solution -- genetic manipulation or an introduced virus -- but has said it could take up to 10 years to find one.
Northern Territory wildlife officer Keith Saalfeld said money spent on trapping and killing was wasted. "If we removed 90% of them, they would replace themselves in nine months," he said.
He also warned that a biological solution has hazardous in itself. The cane toad was itself introduced as a bio-control.
"The remedy could be worse, wiping out all our frog species and leading to the collapse of our ecosystem if we don't get it right."
He wants "toad musters," where hundreds of people collect them, saying this "could be a fun event, with prizes for the biggest and ugliest collected."
The toads reached the UNESCO-listed world heritage site of Kakadu National Park, 240 kilometres southeast of Darwin, in April, 2001, and are now 75 kilometres south of Darwin. They are expected to enter the city in February.
A study by local scientist Meri Oakwood recently found that cane toads were killing the quoll, a small native marsupial.
Already endangered, the spotted Northern Quoll is particularly vulnerable to the toad, according to her study, published by Nature Australia, which shows the species' arrival in Kakadu had caused a further, drastic decline in the quoll population.
Under a program dubbed Island Ark, the Northern Territory government has moved 63 quolls to offshore islands in a bid to save them until a solution is found to the toad problem.