The Goats That Ate The World

Invasive plants and animals are part of the curse of modern forms of transport and trade .....

Nothing Can Eat The Poisonous Cane Toad And Live .....

.... and the cane toad in Australia is perhaps the poster boy of introductions that have gone spectacularly wrong.

Boomerang Effect

I have not followed the Cane Toads in Australia story for quite a while .... last time I looked, they were still expanding their range, but it was hoped that natural obstacles such as deserts, and mountains, would mean that even if man couldn't halt them, natural geography would.

No, Not This Common Toad .....

 

This would mean that the south and western parts of the continent would (barring accidental introductions via cars, trucks, trains, or crate packages), remain free of the pest.

 

News From The Dark Side Of The Moon

The Illustrated London News August of 1864 was an action packed edition, from which I could have created many posts .... but in this series of blasts from the news past, I will create just one more post from that edition. So after a post from Ceylon, and one from North America, I have created a post from the Pacific area - New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

The first story is from New Zealand where there was a simple story on the arrival of news from England - an event which was a very important for a people who were months away from news from home. They may as well have been on another planet or the dark side of the moon.
 

News From The Other Side Of The World

.... it took a month for the packet ship to arrive from Sydney alone, and months for the ships from England to get to Australia.

The Main Post Office In Auckland 1864

This is particularly interesting as there was brief mention of military actions in New Zealand, which must have been wars with the native Maori's .... so the news from home and family would have been even more wanted.

Fighting In New Zealand

Then there was a report on the building of the Tarradale railways viaduct completing the Melbourne to Sandhurst line. This was in Victoria Colony, the richest in Australia at the time ....

A Big Achievement In Australia.

And the arrival of flat bottomed schooners in Sydney New South Wales having sailed 16,000 miles to get there was big news. Its easy to forget how many ships were sunk on trips of those distances in 1864 ...

The West Hartley - One Of Two Flat Bottomed Schooners

Finally, The Illustrated London News reported on a land, so strange and exotic that it had been closed to westerners up until 1853, when Admiral Perry from the US Navy had forced it to open up. So this was only a decade after that opening up ..... Japan really was a foreign land.

Report From Osaca in Japan

Osaca Street Scene in 1864

The Japanese Army Modernised Quickly After This Scene in 1864

Cane Toads Forever

The cane toad story is one that we have followed with much interest and not a little amusement for a number of years .... whilst I am aware that the cane toads are not really a laughing matter .. the fact is that toads are essentially funny (toad of toad hall et al) in the Western culture.

So the latest cunning plan, which is to reintroduce the tadpoles of a small green frog, into the breeding ponds of the cane toads is mildly amusing ... apparently the tadpoles of this frog (a native to Australia), are better competitors for the food supply in the ponds than cane toad tadpoles, and it means that less cane toads reach a size big enough to leave the tadpole stage .... the green tree frog spawn can't actually eat the cane toad tadpoles, but the restriction in the food supply they cause, cuts their overall numbers.

Its been party time for Cane Toads

However I can't help thinking that a toad that migrates 40 km per annum, has so far crossed every barrier except total desert, and conquered the north east of Australia, is not going to be beaten back by some competitive tadpoles ..... so we won't hold our breath.

Honest Aussie Politician

An honest Aussie politician admitted that occasionally he 'lies'. Now there's something you don't see everyday!

Tony Abbott told ABC News that his off-the-cuff policy comments cannot always be taken as "gospel truth", but that his carefully scripted remarks can.

Oddly this bout of 'honesty', is being used as ammunition against him rather than as praiseworthy thing to admit.

We live in a funny world where a poltician is better off 'lying' by saying that they always 'tell the truth'.

Cane Toad Burgers

Cane toads - I thought this story was finished with my last post on the subject, when it looked as though they were going to be sold to China ......

Cane Toads - Burgers

 

However those darn cane toads are still proving a problem and now its proposed to make "Caneburgers" for the local wild life, in order to 'teach them' that they are poisonous with out killing them off.

One suspects that this is not the last we will hear of these pesky toads ....

Solution To The Cane Toad Problem!

Finally a solution to the great Cane Toad problem .........eat them!

Yes finally the Chinese appetite for eating or using as medicine everything that walks, crawls, swims, wriggles or otherwise exists on the planet, may come in useful at last. This is because one enterprising businessman has finally spotted a gap in the market and the possibility of filling it with Australia's number one enemy, the Cane Toad!

Yes a representative from a Queensland meat processing firm is travelling to China next month to negotiate an export deal, to sell a large number of the estimated 200 million cane toads in Australia. It appears that in China the cane toad is a popular ingredient in a range of traditional medicines in China. Its toxins are used as a heart stimulant and as a diuretic as well a remedy for sinusitis and toothache. The animal's skin and organs are also thought to have powerful therapeutic qualities......... a bit like the Chinese views on every other living creature in fact.

Anyway, this is not the time to be churlish and despite the need to overcome various quarantine and licensing formalities before exports can begin, an end to the problem may just be in sight.

Cane Toads Australian Invasions Halted?

A while back I blogged on the rise and conquest of the Cane Toad in Australia.

At the time it looked as though nothing could stop them, and I even entered into correspondence with scientists in Australia who were trying to control them .... I was interested in the story and their plans.

Anyway, this week came some good news, some parts of Australia maybe 'too cold' or 'too dry' for the Cane Toads to advance into these areas. This story on the BBC, offers hope that some areas may survive the Cane Toad invasion and allow scientists a chance to develop control methods.

However a note of warning, the toads have proved very adaptable so far, and may yet find away around difficulties e.g. accidental introductions bypassing natural barriers or even local wet periods, or warm spells temporarily removing the obstacles.

The danger still remains that they will get into the major river systems in the south of the continent, or the permanent water sources like those in the West MacDonnell Ranges and the Pilbara in the interior and adapt to local colder water conditions (after all, turtles manage to do this in the UK and are now thriving).

But its still some good news for the local wildlife and may yet prove to be a temporary answer for some areas, but somehow I suspect this adaptable invader may yet find a way past this obstacle.

The Irresistible Cane Toads (Conquerers of the Outback).

The Problem: The Cane Toad (Bufo Marinus) is Australia’s greatest ever threat to native fauna since man arrived.

The History: Introduced as a pest control in the sugar cane fields in the 1930’s it spread quickly and finding no predators, has now reached approx 200 million spread over Northern Australia, and because the are

• Very poisonous (they have a toxic skin), and kill predators that eat or bite them, and
• Voracious predators and will eat anything that they can get their mouths round e.g. Small mammals, insects, fish, Chihuahuas etc etc.
• The breed like hell, and with no predators the young survive in massive numbers.

 

They are a very real threat to native species diversity. They have few predators in their native Hawaii and are controlled by illness, rather than Hawaiians species. Introducing new bacteria’s would be risky and in any case their range is too great now.