Cane toads to face trap
RESEARCHERS at James Cook University are months away from releasing a household cane toad trap – a project which has been in the making for 15 years.
Professor Lin Schwarzkopf from the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity and Climate Change said it was expected the trap would be sold in hardware stores from May.
JCU has been working with Animal Control Technologies Australia in the development of the trap.
She said climate change had allowed toads to migrate into New South Wales and survive in southern conditions.
“They’re definitely moving south and have established a population in Sydney,” Prof Schwarzkopf said. “With southern areas becoming warmer and wetter there will be more toads down there.
“I think people have kind of given up on toads thinking they can’t do anything about them.”
University of Melbourne associate professor Ben Phillips said an Australian entomologist warned of the perils of the invasive species shortly after they first arrived on the east coast.
The former James Cook University researcher said Walter Froggatt in 1936 raised the alarm shortly after toads had been introduced.
“He said there was no limit to their westward spread and they would probably become as big a problem as the ( cane) pest,” Assoc Prof Phillips said.
He believes the introduction of cane toads intended to control the cane beetle in North Queensland almost 90 years ago was a mistake.
“It was never intended that they were going to spread across the northern third of the country,” he said.
Assoc Prof Phillips said the shipment of the invasive species from Hawaii from 1935 had led to Northern Australia’s cane toad population gradually spiralling out of control.
“They’re about halfway through the Kimberly at this point,” he said.
Assoc Prof Phillips says it was never established whether cane toads had achieved the mission intended for them.
“Chemical pesticides came along less than a decade after toads were introduced.”