'Cane toads must be clubbed'
2005-04-11 10:29
Sydney - An Australian parliamentarian outraged animal rights activists on Monday by suggesting an invasion of poisonous cane toads be fought by bashing the beasts with cricket bats and golf clubs.
David Tollner, a member of parliament from Prime Minister John Howard's Liberal Party, said he grew up using the brute force method against the toads, a dangerous and despised pest that is spreading across northern Australia.
"We hit them with cricket bats and golf clubs and the like," Tollner said on ABC radio.
"I think if people could be encouraged rather than discouraged (to attack them) the better the chance will be of stopping the cane toads arriving in Darwin and other parts of the top of Australia," said the MP, who represents the Northern Territory.
Suggestion 'clubbed'
Animal rights groups clubbed the MP's suggestion.
"We don't want children picking up their golf club or their cricket bat in the backyard and having a go at any animal," said Fiona Cummins, chief executive of the RSPCA in Darwin.
Cummins said encouraging children to bash cane toads could lead to attacks on other animals.
"We've had cases recently in Darwin where we've had children having violent acts towards bats; interstate we've had violence towards kittens," she said.
Cane toads were introduced into Queensland state in the 1930s to control another pest - beetles that were ravaging the sugar cane fields of the tropical northern coasts.
But the toads now number in the millions and are spreading westward into the Northern Territory, posing a deadly danger to native wildlife.
Cane toads have poisonous sacs on the back of their heads full of a venom so powerful it can kill crocodiles, snakes or other predators in minutes.
The animals, explosive breeders, have spread into the wetlands of world heritage Kakadu National Park and were recently found in the outskirts of Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory.
All attempts to fight the spread of the toads so far have failed.
The Northern Territory government last month announced it would spend a million dollars to research biotechnological remedies to the invasion.
The state earlier launched a competition with a cash prize for the best cane toad trap.
Tollner meanwhile was unimpressed by criticism of his suggestion.
"When you talk about animal rights I think you've got to think about the rights of our native animals as well," Tollner said.
"A cane toad can cause a slow death in a crocodile or a goanna (monitor lizard) or any other animal that eats it," he said.
"My view is we've got to eradicate them by any means possible."