Controlling Citizen Cane.
Should you kill that Cane Toad?
sk almost any dinky-di Australian about Cane
Toads, and you encounter disgust – followed
by jokes about massacring the alien amphibi-
ans in complicated and painful ways. As a researcher
who has studied the unlovely toad for more than 15
years, I have talked to a lot of people about a lot of
Cane Toads, and have heard some truly awful stories -
with the giant South American frogs being sent to
oblivion by means of everything from golf clubs to
explosives. Even the kindest people - folks who care
deeply about the plight of the Aussie fauna - often
abandon any trace of mercy when they meet an illegal
alien with a warty skin. Increasingly, I disagree with
them.
A
Cane Toads were brought to coastal north Queensland
in 1935 to eat the beetles plaguing sugarcane planta-
tions. The toads were a failure at beetle control, but
they liked Australia so much that they began spreading
south and west – and they are still going. In the
process, they have aroused great passion from the
Australian community. I was born and bred in
Brisbane, an epicentre of ‘toad hatred’, and as a child I
took it for granted that smashing Cane Toads was a
rite of passage. They were the amphibians that we
were supposed to loathe, and no brutality was too
intense. If you encountered a Cane Toad, the only
socially acceptable response was mayhem.