Australia's Military May Be Asked To Battle Toads

Environmentalists have asked Australia's military to wage war on cane toads, which have spread across some areas of the country in near-plague proportions.

"We need as many people on the ground as we can possibly get, and if the military can work out strategies for controlling toads on their ground, well that's fine with us", Frog Watch spokesman Ian Morris tells an Australian radio network.

Killing the toads with anything from golf clubs to air rifles has become a northern Australian pastime, with their carcasses turned into tourist ornaments and fertiliser.

Graham Sawyer of Frog Watch, a pressure group that cares for frogs but battles the invading toads, has organised "Toad Busts" to catch the animals with traps and plastic bags.

"It's still early enough. We're not going to stop every single cane toad... but what we'll do is get rid of them all as they arrive, and stop that build-up of toads", Sawyer says.

The toads were introduced in Australia in a batch of a few hundred from Hawaii in 1935 to control native cane beetles. However, they have now spread over more than 3,000 km with their numbers upwards of 200 million.

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