They’re ugly, poisonous and wreaking havoc on our native ecosystems – so how on earth did they end up here in the first place? The arrival of Cane Toads in Australia is probably one of the biggest blunders in the history of agricultural science. Thank goodness the guys responsible aren’t alive to see the impact of their experiment.

Back in 1935, someone had the bright idea of introducing the Cane Toad, aka Rhinella marina, into Australia to control the sugar cane beetle population that was decimating sugar crops in Queensland. Now, you can’t be too harsh on those well-meaning old-school guys. They had the best of intentions, and they weren’t the first and certainly won’t be the last to be so unbelievably misguided. In fact, history is riddled with great ideas gone horribly wrong – like the Enlightenment-era trend of wearing lead-based makeup to demonstrate your successful social climber status, resulting in tooth decay, skin damage and even death, or the asbestos aprons once marketed to housewives as the perfect fire-retardant kitchen garment. These days your foundation isn’t likely to kill you, and homewares stores no longer sell carcinogenic aprons, but we’re still battling the fallout from the Cane Toad invasion – and it shows no signs of slowing down.

In 1935, around 100 Cane Toads were imported from Hawaii to an experimental station close to Cairns. At the time, beetles were having a great time eating the roots of sugarcane plants, which was not so great for the farmers. The agriculture boffins thought that introducing Cane Toads would help, as they quite enjoy snacking on beetles, so the toads were allowed to breed and more than 3000 were released in north Queensland sugarcane plantations. A few naturalists and scientists who were clearly ahead of their time protested a bit, but nobody took much notice of those party poopers. Further toads were released, and soon they started to spread – first south towards Brisbane and inland, and eventually into the Northern Territory and New South Wales. By 2001 they were playing tourist in Kakadu National Park, and more recently they have been found in northern Western Australia.

As they’ve dominated the northern part of the country, Cane Toads have left utter chaos in their wake. With few natural predators they’ve been able to conquer much of the landscape, with terrible results for out native wildlife. Because they are poisonous, they don’t only impact their prey. Predators that are silly enough to try a sample from the Cane Toad buffet are also affected, making Cane Toads enemy number one for much of the native species in northern Australia.

Snakes, goannas, birds and freshwater crocodiles have all died after eating, or attempting to eat, Cane Toads. Currently there are seventy-five different species of Australian lizards, crocodiles and freshwater turtles which are under threat from Cane Toads. Of these, sixteen are considered to be ‘threatened species’, meaning Cane Toads could play a key role in their eventual extinction. They’re also a danger to forty-nine species of snakes, and if native frog tadpoles consume Cane Toad eggs they can die. The Cane Toad is listed as a ‘Key Threatening Process’ for the northern quoll, and in some areas of north Queensland and the Northern Territory, quoll populations have been disappearing rapidly since the introduction of Cane Toads.

The flow-on effects of the Cane Toad have massive consequences for our ecosystems, and to understand why you’ll need to go back to what you learned in high school science class about food chains and biodiversity. If the Cane Toads are causing predator numbers to decline, what happens to the small reptiles and mammals below them in the food chain? If we can’t get the Cane Toad population under control, and eventually eradicated, the impact on native flora, fauna and agriculture could be devastating.

The Cane Toad problem even extends to Indigenous communities, with many groups reporting they’ve noticed a decrease in their traditional bush tucker species such as snakes, turtles and monitor lizards, as well as totem species used for traditional ceremonies. For a small creature they’ve sure caused a whole lot of problems, proving size really doesn’t matter once and for all.

Ok, so that was the bad news – now for something a little more upbeat. There’s hope on the horizon for tackling the Cane Toad invasion, and it’s a little bottle of science that goes by the name of CROAKED™. We know we can’t take out every Cane Toad in Australia on our own, so we need your help. Pick up a bottle of CROAKED™ and have it on-hand so you can kill Cane Toads quickly and humanely, and play your part in Australia’s biggest ecological battle. The fight against Cane Toads starts with taking your backyard back – thanks to CROAKED™.