Toad News

The response from the volunteers has been fantastic with 25 to 35 people on the ground each night. Numbers of participants continue to grow. The Muster continues until October 31.

MUSTER - TOAD TOTAL AT END OF WEEK #2 = 6352

This week the Muster had participants from – Lake Argyle, Kununurra, Timber Creek, Darwin, Broome, Toodyay, Perth, Denmark, Melbourne, Qld, NSW and Canada.

As the Stop the Toad Foundation’s Great Toad Muster completes its second week, it has already accounted for over 6000 adult cane toads.

This python has killed a native frog. If its next catch is a cane toad, it will almost certainly be its last. Photo Carl Danzi (STTF Muster volunteer)

STTF Regional Coordinator Graeme Sawyer says “the numbers are higher than expected and that this highlights the fact that reconnaissance has been insufficient in the past. It appears that toads have been in the area for over a year”.

Two days of helicopter airtime provided in week one by Slingair of Kununurra enabled accurate GPS readings for the water that remains in the dry landscape at this time of year. These GPS points have now become Muster ‘targets’ because this is where surviving toads will be.

The Stop the Toad Foundation has done significant research into its strategy for the Muster and has determined that repeated ‘busts’ at the same site over successive nights to drive toad numbers as close to zero as possible.

This approach is starting to pay dividends as some of the lagoon systems which have been ‘busted’ have yielded very low numbers of toads over the past few nights. It is good for volunteer morale to see an area that saw over 200 toads captured on the first night and over 600 toads over five nights, have only 8 toads on the sixth night. Within the next ten days it is expected that some of the Musterers will move back to the east with only clean up crews required on the western side of the floodplain.

A Stop The Toad crew at field camp near Auvergne Lagoon during week two of the Great Toad Muster. Temperatures regularly reach 35 degrees during the day but a cheerful and comfortable camp has been established despite this. Most hard work is done during the evening as this is when adult toads are active. “I am devastated with how close the toads have got to the West Australian border, and the two nights that I was out there busting I was overwhelmed with the amount of toads that we picked up." Peter and Lyn Lynch from Sydney. (Peter centre front on crate)

Information gained from the Great Toad Muster is so far proving invaluable in showing what can be achieved by people on the ground at this time of year and providing new insight into effective strategies for cane toad control.

The Slingair chopper carries teams to identify targets – the remaining water in the landscape.

Young Mikey Curtin was one of 19 students from Jungdranung Remote Community School (Kununurra) who crossed the border to spend a night with the Stop The Toad team in Timber Creek. Photo Paola Diaz

MUSTER - TOAD TOTAL AT END OF WEEK #2 = 6352

Muster operations Timber Creek - 0427 080 594