BOB’S SHOT AT TOADS
KATTER’S Australian Party leader Bob Katter has thrown his support behind a 40¢ cane toad bounty, encouraging children to get off the couch and kill the “terrible scourge” with low-powered air rifles.
To prove how easy it was, Mr Katter brought eight dead cane toads with him to Townsville, that he had caught on his veranda.
It comes after One Nation leader Pauline Hanson announced her collect-a-toad campaign that would see welfare recipients being paid 10¢ for every specimen killed.
Mr Katter said he was joining his One Nation colleague in calling for action, urging the state and federal governments to help stop the explosion of cane toad numbers.
“There were 3000 cane toads released in Australia in 1932; there is now over two million … they reach right up to Burketown,” Mr Katter said.
“The bird life has been threatened … our frilly lizards are almost gone in cane toad areas, goannas are gone, our fishing is highly threatened,” he said.
Mr Katter said he wanted children to use low-powered air rifles to kill the creatures.
“When I was a kid of 12 we were shooting 3A3 rifles … the tiny low-powered air rifle is not much more than a toy,” he said.
“If each house in North Queensland, half a million houses, if each of them got 10 toads a year that’s 5 million toads … and each one of them has 20 or 30 thousand baby toads a year.”
Mr Katter rubbished claims made by cane toad specialists that the plan won’t work and that the focus should instead be on tadpole eradication.
“Let them go into the waters of North Queensland and collect the tadpoles; I can tell you there will be another species collecting them.”