# the cane toad must be stoped.



## mukman (Apr 8, 2009)

Cane toads are a major problem in Australia, so bad in fact they are a declared Key Threatening process under federal Legislation in the Environment protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999(EPBC Act). They are one of the worst invasive species in the world. Cane toads breed up into huge numbers and dominate the ecology in the area.The are listed as a threatening process because they kill native predators, compete with native wildlife for food and breeding and shelter sites and eat native wildlife.
To kill a toad humanely, the easiest approach is to pick the animal up (gloves are a good idea, to ensure you don’t get exposed to the toad’s poison!) and put it in a plastic bag, then pop the bag into the fridge. After a few hours the toad will be pretty much asleep (although still very much alive) and you can pop the bag into the freezer. Leave it there for a long time – preferably a few days


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## mukman (Apr 8, 2009)

please post if u agree or dissagree 
also if u no hoe to make e petittion thing plz tell me


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## Kupres (Apr 8, 2009)

IF ONLY we could find a good use for them, I mean comercialy,,(Skins or some sort of chemical produced within them((Maybe even medicinal)),, You'd see how quick they would dissaper...

One thing i cant understand is the effort that was put into the control & eradication of _Solenopsis invicta _"Fire ant" by the SEQ gov... & yet nothing on that scale for the cane toad. I would gladly support a gov. funded program similar to that of the fire ant. I am in the earthworks game,, & I honestly never thought they would get the ants under control... But in my mind they have done a pretty good job. & it only took them a few years!! Imagine what we could achieve in 10 yrs through a systimated program if we were willing to pay a bit.

The key is effective mass media education, & make it the cool thing to do.... Just like the SEQ water crises,, eventhough we have got plenty of water now,, I dont think there would be a normal person out there that would waste water like we used to.... The same could be for the toad population if it was managed correctly!!


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## ShaunMorelia (Apr 8, 2009)

Dont quote me but I heard that the secretion from their skin is a good source of beauty therapy cream......
or they are a good replacement for shark fin soup......


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## licky (Apr 8, 2009)

lol kupres theres a big difference to killing an ant nest and poisoning the water to kill cane toads. poison water everythin would die.
plus the reason behind eradicating fire ants is that people actually died from them.
Off the top of my head i cant remembeer anyone dyin yet.
People would rather save the lives of people then of animals, as simple as that


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## ad (Apr 8, 2009)

Here are some Cane Toad tadpoles,
On my folks farm in a small dam.


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## Veredus (Apr 8, 2009)

Kupres said:


> IF ONLY we could find a good use for them, I mean comercialy,,(Skins or some sort of chemical produced within them((Maybe even medicinal)),, You'd see how quick they would dissaper...


 
Actually finding a practical use for the toads (especially medicinal) would create a reason to preserve them...


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## Kupres (Apr 8, 2009)

lol Licky!! Who said anything about poisoning water???

You mentioned that as if I suggested that..

FAR FROM IT!!...

What a wild & primative way in dealing with the problem!! There could be many different effictave ways in eradicating them effectivley.

Second of all,, we didn't eradicate ants because they have a small chance of killing someone!! There are many things that kill here in AUS,, Anamial & non-anamial alike. We controled them because they are an INVASIVE species that can cause harm to flora, fauna & yes humans!! The trick is to convince the public to beg the gov. that the Cane Toad is in a similar cat. worthy of action.


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## Kupres (Apr 8, 2009)

Veredus. There is a difference between "preserved" in the context I believe how you ment it,,, & a controled program,,, That is if there was a particular use for this pest.


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## Kris (Apr 8, 2009)

Ad, you feed your tadpoles Bread? If you want them to grow faster use turkey mince mixed with high protein gold fish flakes. It also intensifies their beautiful; colours.

Ok, on a serious note, isn't there some mob mulching Toads like they do to carp? If the govenment was serious about eradication them the could do what they did with wild dogs -dollars for scalps but make it so many $$$ for x amount of kg's maybe? 

I'm off to put up a "STOP - No Toads Beyond this Point" sign now.


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## FAY (Apr 8, 2009)

If you have nothing relevent to say in this thread...please don't bother.


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## tenacres1100 (Apr 8, 2009)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/31/2530887.htm

Hungry ants have cane toads on the menu


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## herptrader (Apr 8, 2009)

One of the Barefoot Bushman's DVD's (available from the Herp Shop) clearly demonstrates how to cook and eat the legs. This can be done quite safely as there is no toxin in the legs.

Soo... all we need to do is educate the Frogs to eat toads legs and not frogs legs we will have a booming export market.


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## brycehf (Apr 8, 2009)

While i lived in darwin i always did my bit to help by collecting them and culling humanly. I was actually quite suprised, i first left darwin in 04 and there were only one or 2 of them around, came back in 07 and there were thousands of them.
I also noticed there seemed to be less lizards and dragons around the casuarina beach foreshore. I dont know if thats due to cane toads...but id imagine it would to some extent because they eat everything.


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## licky (Apr 8, 2009)

lol kupres how would u go about stopping them?
and how would you go about tricking people?
people get out the golf clubs and the bats of alsorts and swing away.


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## Noongato (Apr 8, 2009)

I have a cane toad as a coin purse thingy on my keys. I would pay someone top $$ to make me a set of car seat covers made of cane toad leather, but i want their heads etc stitched into the leather to make it look real gruesome


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## mukman (Apr 8, 2009)

what we need is a parasite or a diesese. u no what i say, when in doubt use leathel bio chemicles


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## BrownHash (Apr 8, 2009)

mukman said:


> what we need is a parasite or a diesese. u no what i say, when in doubt use leathel bio chemicles



mukman did you check out the link to Rick Shine and 'Team Bufo' I left in your visitors messages. Some of the research that they have done looks into things like control through viruses. There is also a lot of info on thier site that helps cut through a lot of the misinformation out there and will give people an idea of what could work and what has been proven not to work. 

One of my favourites is how Cane Toad tadpoles will eat Cane Toad eggs.

I guess if all else fails then we could fall back onto 'plan B', introducing Frenchmen.


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## Kupres (Apr 8, 2009)

lol LICKY. Once again, You talk about tricking people as if I mentioned or suggested to trick people into something,,

I really dont know what you are trying to get at?? What i said was---------"The trick is to convince the public to beg the gov. that the Cane Toad is in a similar cat. _(catogary) _worthy of action."--------

There is no need to try & trick anyone into believing that the Cane Toad is a real & evident problem to our ecology.


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## mysnakesau (Apr 8, 2009)

Find some meat ants. Apparently they are a newly discovered predator of juvenile and baby cane toads and don't die. They might only feed off small ones but thats more little ones that don't get to grow up and breed.


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## TedBundy (Apr 8, 2009)

Don't have much intel on cane toads. But i do believe they should be stopped and sometimes when up at my grandma's (up north) pick them up and freeze them.


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## Dusty62 (Apr 8, 2009)

We have "Clean up Australia day" which results in thousands of tonnes of rubished cleared from our land each year. Why cant we have "Rid Australia of cane toads day" and see how many tones we get rid of. Shorely this would slow down their migration into other states or maybe put a bounty (??$ per toad) on their heads to be collected at local councils in big freezers. 

Cheers Dusty


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## Sdaji (Apr 8, 2009)

Manual removal can never work on these things; much of their distrubution is in areas too remote for humans to access, or inhabited by crocodiles, or fenced off and inaccessable for various reasons. Even in the cities, you only need to miss one pair and you suddenly have thousands of them hopping around everywhere, and if you miss just a few of those you've acheived nothing.

Paying people to kill them (as with putting a bounty on a scalp) will not come anywhere near making any difference. Even if you could convince people to do their absolute best to catch and kill them for a bounty, and even if it was only costing 1c each, and even if it was somehow possible to get them all, it wouldn't make a measureable affect other than in localised areas near cities. In reality, if every human did everything they possibly could to manually catch and/or kill as many as they could, they'd get about 5-20% of them, and if people wanted to keep doing things like playing cricket on the weekends and going to work by day, that figure would drop to about 0.1%. Keep in mind we'd need over 90% in order to have any appreciate impact even in the short term. Think about it, if anywhere at all we miss just a few, in all of the uninhabitable, inaccessable and prohibited areas of QLD and the NT, it would only be one season before the problem is smacking us around again. Even if we ignore the fact that it's utterly impossible for people to catch enough toads to make a difference, and assume it was possible, there are so many zillions and zillions of them that the Australian economy could not afford to erradicate them if it was a case of eliminating them one by one at a cost per animal. Do the maths; what's the population of toads?

This problem will only be solved using a biological or viral agent. Something which works autonomously, something which will spread to every part of the toads' distribution, and something which will do that largely under its own steam. The 'daughterless gene' is the most promising tool I've heard of, but for some reason they aren't keen to give it a go. I haven't heard a peep about it for a few years now.


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## mysnakesau (Apr 8, 2009)

Dusty62 said:


> We have "Clean up Australia day" which results in thousands of tonnes of rubished cleared from our land each year. Why cant we have "Rid Australia of cane toads day" and see how many tones we get rid of. Shorely this would slow down their migration into other states or maybe put a bounty (??$ per toad) on their heads to be collected at local councils in big freezers.
> 
> Cheers Dusty



Not sure you'd get enough volunteers. Of course everyone wants them gone but mate we're talking about big, ugly, slimy scarey and potentially dangerous frogs. I visited Hartley's Crocodile Farm in Cairns once and they organised a cane toad race. I was nominated to coach one of the toads. I screamed so bad when it so nearly jumped in my lap. Eeewwww!


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## Dusty62 (Apr 8, 2009)

mysnakesau said:


> Not sure you'd get enough volunteers. Of course everyone wants them gone but mate we're talking about big, ugly, slimy scarey and potentially dangerous frogs. I visited Hartley's Crocodile Farm in Cairns once and they organised a cane toad race. I was nominated to coach one of the toads. I screamed so bad when it so nearly jumped in my lap. Eeewwww!


 
Yeah but put a dollar value on their heads and watch the volunteers come out then.


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## australia09 (Apr 8, 2009)

you know what, having 7 barramundi as pets is hard to keep food up to them. luckily their are no toads down this way but one day in the future it is possibly going to happen.
if i were your parents or so buy a few barramundi fingerlings or 10cm+ barramundi and chuck them in, they eat on 30 guppies each so the chances are you wont have no toadpoles in their.


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## waruikazi (Apr 8, 2009)

australia09 said:


> you know what, having 7 barramundi as pets is hard to keep food up to them. luckily their are no toads down this way but one day in the future it is possibly going to happen.
> if i were your parents or so buy a few barramundi fingerlings or 10cm+ barramundi and chuck them in, they eat on 30 guppies each so the chances are you wont have no toadpoles in their.



Cept all the barra will die from toad poisoning!

Hey where'd Mukman go?


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## Serpentor (Apr 9, 2009)

mukman said:


> please post if u agree or dissagree
> also if u no hoe to make e petittion thing plz tell me


disagree* you* know* how* petition*

Sorry, it just bugged me. Was that hard to read with all the mistakes.


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## jezzabel (Apr 9, 2009)

Ahh licky I cant quite believe a person on this site would be so cruel and short sighted- my guess is that you dont hit them with bats and such to try and the problem but rather to enjoy yourself. Do you laugh when you do it like some people do? 

I know I might be stepping out of line here and there will be plenty of people who will disagree but perhaps you should think about what you are saying/doing a bit more.....

I'm really not saying this to be annoying or rude- just to get you to think. I mean some people would say killing snakes with bats would be a good idea and I am sure you would be one of the first to tell them off, but really how are they all that different from people who kill toads in the same way? (realise that snakes and toads are different- not talking about the species- just the actions of the people involved)


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## Ned_fisch (Apr 9, 2009)

Me and a few mates go Cane toad hunting around my area once a week.. We have all put a nail on the end on a Branch type thing. Then we stick the Nail straight through the top of the toads head, I thought that would be more humane then putting it in the fridge/freezer and letting it get freezing cold, and eventually dieing..

Or is my way worse? Does it not kill them as easy?


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## licky (Apr 9, 2009)

i heard sumthin bout the blood crystalizing in the blood stream when you put them in the freezer. that would be extremely painful. least a smack to the face would put them out


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## Kris (Apr 9, 2009)

When I was a kid(when everything was in black and white- we didn't have colours then) I had a bunch of toad eggs and put them in my tank full of natives. Rainbows, P/S Gudgeons, Fly Speckled Hardy Heads,Spangled Perch and Mouth Almightys all died from eating them....except the Spangled Perch. They ate them and survived. So in the end I had a 5 foot tank with four 2'' Spangleds in it.

Cheers,

Kris.


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## Radar (Apr 9, 2009)

Sdaji said:


> . The 'daughterless gene' is the most promising tool I've heard of, but for some reason they aren't keen to give it a go. I haven't heard a peep about it for a few years now.



It's been used on at least one pest fish that I know of (can't remember the species atm, too many holes in my brain, draining all the good stuff), but like you say, seems to have disappeared off the map for toads...


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## grimbeny (Apr 9, 2009)

Sdaji said:


> Manual removal can never work on these things; much of their distrubution is in areas too remote for humans to access, or inhabited by crocodiles, or fenced off and inaccessable for various reasons.


 
I dont think you understand Sdaji, we dont need to logically make an impact. The point is we need a whacking day of sorts were we punish and torture a creater we have dehumanised to the point we can enjoy it and laugh.

Although the impacts would more than likely only be negative we could enjoy ourselves and bond as a community.


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## jezzabel (Apr 9, 2009)

​​From the RSPCA....​​​​Most of us consider cane toads (_Bufo marinus) _to be pests and quite reasonably want to eliminate them from our gardens. However, they are animals and can suffer pain. They must be handled and killed humanely. In fact, the *Queensland Animal Care and Protection Act* makes it unlawful for us to be cruel to cane toads.​​ 
The first step is to make sure that you have identified the animal correctly as a cane toad. As an adult the cane toad is fairly distinctive: it is larger than most native frogs and has a warty, rough skin on its back. However, when the toad is younger and smaller it can appear similar to some native frogs. If in doubt with your identification seek help before killing it.[1] 

Many methods have been used to kill cane toads but most are considered inhumane by RSPCA Queensland. Although the most humane way to kill cane toads remains controversial, currently RSPCA Queensland recommends the following method, _Stepped Hypothermia_.

Ø As cane toads are poisonous to our pets ensure they are kept away from any toads.
Ø Have all the necessary equipment ready before handling the toad – gloves, plastic bag, and plastic container with lid[2]. Label the container with CANE TOAD.
Ø Always wear gloves when handling toads – either thick rubber gloves or gardening gloves.
Ø Pick the toad up firmly, preferably with your hand over its back, and place it in the plastic bag and secure the top.
Ø Place the bag and toad into the plastic container and put the lid on.
Ø Now place the whole thing into your refrigerator (at 4°C) and leave it there for 12 hours. This does not kill the toad but does anaesthetise it. 
Ø Next place the container with toad into the freezer (-20°C) for at least 24 hours. This last step will painlessly kill the toad.
Ø Finally, dispose of the body by putting the entire thing into your wheelie bin, or just the plastic bag (with the body). You can then reuse the plastic container. Alternatively you can bury the body but this must be deep enough so it will not easily be dug up by dogs or native animals.

Remember to wash your hands after each of these steps. Handling of cane toads is best done by adults. Cane toads can also suffer distress from excessive chasing of them, so plan to minimise this. 

[1] Contact National Parks and Wildlife, Queensland Museum or local wildlife group

[2] Old ice-cream containers are ideal for this.


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## herptrader (Apr 9, 2009)

You are thinking of carp.

I am not sure if this type of technology can be applied to toads.



rednut said:


> It's been used on at least one pest fish that I know of (can't remember the species atm, too many holes in my brain, draining all the good stuff), but like you say, seems to have disappeared off the map for toads...


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## naivepom (Apr 10, 2009)

What is this daughterless gene thing? It sounds like you make a gene that prevents toads from producing female offspring but if that is the case then how would you get that gene to spread through the population if you cant do it through reproduciton?

We had a toad killing day in Townsville a few weeks ago. It was good for the kids and education and all that but of the millions of canetoads in the area there were only a few hundred brought in. Having said that I think a sustained culling programme would help make some difference as every toad you remove is potentially allowing a native frog to survive or preventing a snake etc from eating one. True, the second you stop such a programme their numbers will return to normal but if you can keep numbers down then it may also make it easier to introduce some other method such as a virus - though you are on extremely shaky ground with things like that. The cane toad was an introduced species and was a spectacularly bad idea. An introduced virus or biological agent is essentially the same thing and there are very very few examples of introduced species working exactly as they should and being successful. On top of that you need to be very sure whatever you introduce is specific to cane toads as with the global extinction of many frog species and the problems they have with fungal infections etc means you could fairly easily wipe out pretty much every frog out there. And again on that subject meat ants etc are not a solution as they will eat baby native frogs just as readily as cane toads.

Just my 2cents worth!


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## herptrader (Apr 10, 2009)

The mathematics behind the daughter less gene thing says that you will not wipe them out with it but within a few generations the numbers become much reduced as the number of females asymptotes towards 0.


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