Australia has been figuratively battling a plague of biblical proportions but one alliance hopes to stop an invasive amphibian from spreading.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Toad Containment Zone is a partnership between aboriginal tribes, conservationists, pastoralists, and university researchers to prevent cane toads from invading the Pilbara, one of just 15 biodiversity hotspots in the country.
The organization plans to implement a "waterless barrier" in a 25-mile-by-250-mile corridor between Broome and Port Hedland that would be impossible for the toads to cross if not for the cattle stations that dot the area.
"What we're proposing is essentially that we manage that water in a way that … the cattle can still get to it but the toads cannot," Curtin University professor Ben Phillips told ABC. "If we do that, during the dry season, those toads will have to have no water."
"We've got this amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stop them," Phillips added.
Cane toads can rely on fresh water in troughs and dams at the stations to survive the dry season. A study found that without rehydrating, they would only make it about 3.3 miles across five days before dying. However, the toad colonization would be irreversible if it made it to the Pilbara because of the habitat's relative abundance of water.
Therefore, crews want to toad-proof 150 water points by fixing and improving leaky troughs and eliminating open water sources like turkey nest dams and old artesian wells, the ABC reported. Additional measures to obstruct the toad's progress include fences, specialized tadpole traps, and culling events.
Authorities project that cane toads will reach Broome, the start of the natural bottleneck separating the Great Sandy Desert and the Indian Ocean, by the 2026-27 wet season, giving TCZ three years to prepare the water infrastructure.
Officials brought toads from Hawaii in 1935 to control pests on plantations. They've since migrated over 1,200 miles from their original location in northern Queensland.
If the toads make it to the Pilbara, they could take over an additional 67 million acres and potentially cause nine mammals and reptiles to get added to Australia's threatened species list, per the news report. Thirteen other species potentially find themselves in a similar situation, while the northern quoll and ghost bat could get uplisted from endangered to critically endangered with the introduction of cane toads.
"Toads are predators of other frogs that have a role in our culture and ecosystem," Karajarri Traditional Lands Association chief executive Martin Bin Rashid said in the ABC report. "They [toads] tend to wipe out other frog species that are important to both the coastal and desert areas on Karajarri country."
They have already contributed to the nation's biodiversity crisis and threaten many native and keystone species that are culturally and environmentally significant. That makes the eradication of them — and all invasive species, like carp in the Mississippi River or Japanese beetles in Minnesota — crucial to protect an ecosystem.
The cane toad project is estimated to cost 12 million Australian dollars (about $8 million) over seven years, and the Western Australia government has contributed AU$337,000 ($227,000) in seed money. It's unclear where the rest of the funds will come from, but Phillips is hopeful that state and federal governments and potentially affected industries will contribute, per ABC.
"This is a nationally significant conservation initiative. And so $12 million is actually very cheap," Phillips said. "We just need an injection of funds and a bit of time to get it done before the toads arrive."
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