The Cane Toad is a Key Threatening Process to the Australian Nation
Declared by the Federal Government 12 April 2005.
KTB press release 56 27th March 2011.

‘Rambo like’ cane toads hit WA!

In 2005 when Kimberley Toad Buster volunteers first began the fight to slow down the movement of cane toads making their way towards the WA/NT border they had to travel almost 400 kilometres into the NT to find their first toads. It took a year of travelling every weekend to ‘bust’ these frontline toads to realise something was not quite adding up.
“When we initially started toad busting we had been told by scientists and ‘toad experts’ that toads were only travelling about 25-30 km per year, did not swim well in fast flowing water, had low tolerance to saline conditions, that there was a less than 5-10% survival breeding rate, that the lungworm parasite was 20 years behind the front and so on. The list was endless” stated Sharon McLachlan, KTB secretary.
She further stated. “It did not take us long to realise that much of the information we had received about cane toads and their behaviour might have applied to the Queensland toads but not to those that were ‘hell bent’ on reaching WA”
It was observed by Kimberley Toad Buster volunteers that not only were these frontline toads moving an average of 80 kilometres a year, they were larger, extraordinarily resilient to the saline conditions of some of the rivers they were crossing and that the breeding survival rate appeared to be more in the vicinity of 75% to 85%. As observed by KTB volunteer Del Collins “these toads could not only swim they could outrace Dawn Fraser and Ian Thorpe any day. I timed one female toad that stayed underwater for 1.2 hours. These guys are super Rambo toads”.