Toad-killing campaign for Brisbane

Press, 29 July 1989, Page 10

Toad-killing campaign for Brisbane

NZPA-AAP Brisbane Brisbane residents are being urged to arm themselves with an-, tiseptic and freezer bags in a campaign to kill off the city's booming cane toad population.

Brisbane City Council’s cane toad eradication committee is gearing up for summer, with an education campaign and local “eradication nights” to combat the annual toad onslaught. The Lord Mayor, Sallyanne Atkinson, has also written to the Federal Environment Minister, Senator Graham Richardson, seeking access to information gathered by a Federally commissioned study group on toads.

Traditional “toad-bus-ter” weapons such as golf clubs, bricks and fire-crackers will be strongly discouraged in favour of more humane methods in the council campaign.

“We don’t want to encourage' inhumane methods even though the toads are a pest and are ugly,” a council spokesperson said. “Apparently there’s a couple of humane ways of doing it “One is you take a toad, stick it in a plastic bag, do up the plastic bag and stick it in the i freezer, and the toads just go to sleep. “But a lot of people don’t like to have toads

in their freezers,” she said.

“A particularly effective and quick way to kill them... is to use undiluted Dettol.

“Spray it with Dettol and the toad is dead within a minute or two,” she said. Cane toads, or Bufo marinus, were introduced to Australia in 1935 to combat cane beetle in north Queensland canefields, and rapidly multiplied in numbers. The aim of the council campaign is to ensure the local cane toad population is eradicated within five years.

Householders will be advised on ways to kill off toads in their gardens, and on eradication nights local communities will get together to collect toads and dispose of them.

The eradication committee’s chairman, Aiderman Greg Stegman, said several other local authorities in Queensland and northern New South Wales were considering establishing similar eradication programmes. He said Brisbane’s anti-toad measures were adopted by the Byron Bay Council this week.

The Northern Territory National Parks and Wildlife Service also had given its support because of concerns that the toads eventually would inhabit Kakadu National Park.