NSW: Opposition wants local communities to mobilise against toads

AAP General News (Australia)
04-24-2006
NSW: Opposition wants local communities to mobilise against toads

By Adam Gartrell and Peter Jean

SYDNEY, April 24 AAP - The NSW opposition believes a Simpsons-style 'whacking day'
may be going a bit too far, but it does want more local communities mobilised against
the cane toad as it continues migrating south.

The NSW Scientific Committee last week listed cane toads as a key threat to the environment,
and the state opposition today drew inspiration from The Simpsons cartoon series as it
canvassed ways of dealing with the pest.

Introduced to Queensland in 1935 in an unsuccessful attempt to control cane beetles,
the toads are encroaching further into NSW every year.

The toxic toads are a threat to native and domestic animals because they are poisonous
when eaten.

Brandishing a plastic cricket bat, opposition environment spokesman Michael Richardson
declared "the only good cane toad is a dead cane toad".

The cane toad had no place in NSW's ecology and the government needed to act to stop
its spread, Mr Richardson said.

He said he would like to see the government "harnessing the energy" of local communities,
by supporting more annual roundups like that held at Yamba, on the state's north coast.

For the past eight years, hundreds of Yamba volunteers have rounded up and killed cane
toads in what has proven to be an effective method of controlling their numbers.

"That's actually one way of stopping the spread south, but of course there needs to
be more of these functions," Mr Richardson said.

"It's a way of engaging the community in dealing with the problem.

"If we find cane toads spreading throughout Sydney, I for one am going to be hopping mad."

Asked if he would support a state-wide 'whacking day', modelled on an episode of The
Simpsons in which townsfolk band together to club snakes, Mr Richardson joked: "I think
that might be going a little bit far, because we're going to clean up the cane toad before
it comes to that aren't we?"

Mr Richardson said he feared the government would sit on it's hands while the cane
toad infested "the whole coastal strip, from the Tweed to the Victorian border".

But Premier Morris Iemma said the government was working on developing a plan to deal
with the cane toad invasion.

"Most visitors from the north are welcome, but this one isn't," Mr Iemma said.

"We're certainly moving to put together a statewide plan."

AAP ag/hn/sco/jlw

KEYWORD: TOAD

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