Toad News

26 September 2008

The Age, Lindsay Murdoch, Darwin
September 26, 2008
Original story

Toads routed in fight for Kimberley

They shall not pass: Author Tim Winton (front) and Darwin Lord Mayor Graeme Sawyer
prepare for a night busting cane toads. Photo: Glenn Campbell

TIM Winton has joined the Great Toad Muster, a last stand against millions of cane toads on the march towards the region of Western Australia he wrote about in his 2007 book, Rhythms of the Kimberley.

"It's amazing to see how many toads are out here causing such devastation," the Perth-based author said from the muster on remote Auvergne cattle station in the Northern Territory, near the WA border.

Winton, patron of the Stop the Toad Foundation, and volunteers from around Australia have captured 18,000 cane toads near the station's water holes since the muster began last Saturday. Those caught are then killed using carbon dioxide gas.

Organisers are confident that by using mobile barriers the four-week muster will reap tonnes of the ugly, poisonous toads which were introduced into Queensland in 1935 in a disastrous attempt to wipe out cane beetles.

The toads, which unlike frogs cannot climb, are being captured in bulk when they run into the barriers set up near water holes.

"It's given us a surprising ability to pull a mass of the toxic ferals out of the landscape in a short distance, so it's a heartening development," Mr Winton told The Age.

"We are hoping to keep the toads out of the Kimberley, one of the last great wildernesses. But we know that an annual collection of cane toads on the landscape is not a permanent solution.

"We are executing a holding action while the scientific boffins in Canberra can find a biological solution."

Government agencies have been attempting for decades to find a biological control for the toads, which have spread from Queensland across the top of northern Australia.

When the heavily built creatures with a warty skin arrive in new areas they quickly kill rare northern quolls, goannas, snakes, turtles, crocodiles and other natural species.

Winton, a three-time winner of the Miles Franklin Award and author of 20 books, described the failure of Australians to fight to stop the toads spreading from Queensland over many years as "spineless fatalism".

But he has been inspired by 70 volunteers working at the muster in searing end-of-dry-season temperatures in one of the most rugged and isolated parts of Australia (crocodiles live in many of the water holes).

Winton said it will be disastrous if the toads reach the Kimberley's stunning and dramatically changing landscape. "I love the Kimberley," Winton said.

"I feel like I owe it something because it has given me such enormous pleasure.

"I will do whatever I can to preserve it."

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