what is being done to control cane toads
By Ellie Boyle
Conservation Field Officer, WWF-Australia
Up here in the Kimberley, the cane toads are just coming.
These large, toxic toads pose such a huge threat to our native wildlife. To them, these toads expect like existing prey - an easy, tasty, frog-like snack. Except the difference between their usual frog prey and cane toads, is that cane toads produce a powerful toxicant called bufotoxin that tin can cause heart attacks for animals that choose to snack.
The showtime encounter with a cane toad is commonly the last.
Cane toads have already blasted their mode across Queensland and the Northern Territory where they've caused devastating local extinctions in Kakadu National Park. They're at present marching into the concluding biodiversity strongholds in Western Australia - the Kimberley.
If we do null, we are looking at local extinctions of native species. Some populations may never recover, particularly when we're also fighting against other threats similar inappropriate burn down regimes, feral animals and climate change.
We need to do something fast, and now.
Volition y'all help protect native species from the cane toad invasion in the Kimberley?
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At this stage, at that place's no way nosotros can stop the pikestaff toad invasion from proceeding through the whole of the Kimberley. Female cane toads tin lay up to thirty,000 eggs twice a year, and they've adapted extremely well to our Australian mural, inhabiting areas that they previously couldn't. They're an unstoppable beast, spreading v times faster than they used to at most 50 kilometres a twelvemonth. They're fifty-fifty spreading down southward, adapting to cooler climates. Unless there's a new scientific control that comes out, killing unmarried cane toads simply won't work.
So, in order to save our native species, smaller cane toads are being released in the Kimberley alee of the invasion. Sounds like a crazy idea, right?
A handful of organisations, including WWF-Australia, accept come together to grade the Cane Toad Coalition. By coming together nosotros're using innovative methods to teach native predators non to eat toxic toads.
The idea behind rereleasing smaller cane toads (called metamorphs) in vital habitats is that nosotros're exposing our native predators to a small-scale taste of cane toad toxin that makes them sick - simply doesn't impale them. This is called gustatory modality disfavor training.
Everyone talks about information technology like bad food poisoning. Y'all get to a restaurant, you get sick… and yous never go dorsum. If we can train native animals to conform their behaviour and acquire to avoid the toads, this could exist our best bet to save species that are endangered, like the northern quoll and yellow-spotted monitor lizard.
Fifty-fifty if we tin can save pocket-sized pockets of native wildlife, we can assistance save the species.
Right at present, the Coalition are belongings educational workshops throughout the Kimberley and then that people are aware and prepared for cane toads and the threats they pose to our native wildlife. When the moisture flavour hits in December through to March, the Coalition will be releasing cane toad metamorphs throughout the landscape alee of the cane toad forepart where at that place are a loftier number of predators, including goannas, snakes and freshwater crocodiles.
The group volition too be doing pre and post-population estimates earlier and after the cane toads, to study the survival rates of wildlife.
The calibration of this project is huge. At that place are and then many people coming together and working really hard on this projection to brand a big departure.
The Pikestaff Toad Coalition are working with local Indigenous rangers and Traditional Owners in the Kimberley who are doing pretty much all the on-footing piece of work. They're operating on their own land, areas that they've managed for a really long time.
It'south expensive, merely important work. Some of these areas are merely accessible past helicopter, and a lot of the main roads through the Kimberley close downwardly during the wet season, so it's possible to get stuck out in that location for three months in one place. The Coalition too have to brood toads to produce plenty cane toad metamorphs to brand a difference, brainwash communities and have the appropriate field equipment.
Projects like this really reduce the probability of native species like the northern spotted goanna from going extinct. Australia doesn't take a groovy track record - we've already lost 29 mammals to extinction over the last 200 years, so this is our all-time chance at making sure it doesn't happen once again.
Volition you lot assistance protect native species against the arrival of cane toads in the Kimberley, earlier the wet flavor begins?
DONATE Now
This work is made possible by the Pikestaff Toad Coalition. A partnership between a group of research, conservation and land management organisations. Partners include Macquarie University; Parks and Wild fauna Service Western Australia; Kimberley Land Council; Australian Wildlife Conservancy; Dunkeld Pastoral Co Pty Ltd; Rangelands NRM; Matso'due south and WWF-Australia.
This project is supported by Lotterywest.
Source: https://www.wwf.org.au/news/blogs/releasing-cane-toads-to-save-our-native-species
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