Bash the Toxic Toads?
Cane toads are poisonous, ugly-looking large toads that are a major problem in parts of Australia. Brought in early in the 20th century in an effort to control crop-destroying can beetle populations, the population of cane toads soon exploded and became a major pest itself. According to the BBC, there are as many as 100 million cane toads in Australia today.
Since animals such as fresh water crocodiles, dingoes and kangaroos can die from eating the toxic toads, reducing and/or eradicating them is a high priority.
Nonetheless, not everyone appreciated Liberal MP David Tollner’s suggestion for dealing with the toads — people should take bats to the toads as Tollner and others did when he was a child.
Tollner said,
We hit them with cricket bats, golf clubs and the like. Things were a bit different, most kids had a slug gun or an air rifle and we would get stuck into them with that sort of thing as well. If people could be encouraged to do it rather than discouraged the better the chance will be of stopping the cane toads arriving in Darwin and other parts of northern Australia.
Australia’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal’s immediately condemned the suggestion and said anyone who bashed cane toads with bats would be fined and/or jailed for animal cruelty. According to The Associated Press, animal welfare groups in Australia would prefer that the toads be killed by freezing them (now there’s an efficient way to deal with 100 million cane toads).
Tollner’s solution was endorsed, however, by Environment Minister Ian Campbell who told reporters,
I would encourage anything that has a practical effect on stopping cane toad numbers. I remember as a child growing up in Brisbane I used to shoot them with my air rifle. That was relatively ineffective, I can report.
The reader must, at this point, be wondering how Tollner and Campbell avoided becoming serial killers given the animal rights can that cruelty to animals is an accurate predictor of violence against people.
Sources:
Toxic Toad Problem? Join The Club. Associated Press, April 14, 2005.
Australia MP targets toxic toads. Phil Mercer, BBC News, April 11, 2005.
Tags: Australia