KIMBERLEY TOAD BUSTERS NEWSLETTER No. 29

Queen MaryG KTB Patron ORIC photo

The Cane Toad is a Key Threatening Process to the Australian Nation

Declared by the Federal Government 12 April 2005

AUSTRALIANS NEED A NATIONAL CANE TOAD THREAT ABATEMENT PLAN (TAP) NOW!
KTB CANE TOAD EDUCATION

1st June 2009

Special Newsletter

This 29 th Kimberley Toad Busters’ Newsletter is produced by Kimberley Specialists In Research Inc in conjunction with Kimberley Toad Busters Inc. Kimberley Specialists, a founding member of the Kimberley Toad Busters, continues to support the campaign against the cane toad by supporting www.canetoads.com.au , raising funds and supporting cane toad scientific research. KTBs are a tax deductible entity. Please see our website for our direct donation facility or how to sponsor one of our research projects.

IF EVERYONE WAS A TOADBUSTER,
THE TOADS WOULD BE BUSTED!

kimberleytoadsbusters@canetoads.com.au
www.kimberleyspecialists.com.au
kimberleyspecialists@westnet.com.au

Contents

KTB CANE TOAD EDUCATION

Understanding the invading cane toad and disseminating that knowledge has been a crucial element of the KTB cane toad campaign. Education has had a number of elements that include participation, humour, publications, presentations and most importantly a very successful website to disseminate our knowledge. HUMOUR: Thank you Alan McKenzie! Our witty Vietnam Veteran and the most hardy and outspoken KTB supporter, Alan McKenzie sent us this “photo” he found on the web!. It pretty well sums up the situation if this was a cane toad and not a green tree frog, and the jaws were a saltwater crocodile!

KTB CANE TOAD EDUCATION RESULTS

KTB volunteers have undertaken 592,805 documented volunteer field hours at westerly moving front lines; and hundreds of thousands of administration and community education hours. These hours are field based education and produce knowledge, photos and understanding that inform and accurately tells the story of the westerly moving invading cane toad.
KTBs have trained their community to understand and recognise cane toads long before they reached the East Kimberley through a number of tactics which include:

• Toadbusting at frontlines every week, 52 weeks of the year since September 10 2005
• Registering almost 3,000 volunteers
• Catching and recording 372,678 adult cane toads (as at 1 June 2009)
• Dispatching millions of cane toad eggs, tadpoles, metamorphs
• Developing new humane/safe catching/disposal techniques, and made DVD recording of CO2 process for assessment by government departments/ANZCCART
• KTB have raised awareness and understanding of cane toads in Western Australia, Australia and the international community by:
• Developing a very successful website which averages over 1,700 daily hits: see www.canetoads.com.au
• Distributing over 8,000 cane toad education brochures just updated to include a poster pictorial representation of differences between native frogs and toads

Presenting our toadbusting model in a wide variety of forums Releasing 40 media releases and 28 newsletters: see online Developing online Fact Sheets, which now number 4 with further drafts in the making Developing a large photo data bank for use of anyone on request Supporting countless documentary makers from all over world: for example upcoming film by documentary maker Mark Lewis Causing many cane toad articles in newspapers and journals and online, including the Age, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, West Australian magazines

• Providing expertise to community toadbusting groups around Australia and to SA&NSW governments developing cane toad management plans
• Launching our “What’s In Your Backyard?” project. This project asks all East Kimberley residents to record what’s in their backyard before toads arrive and return their data cards to KTBs.
• Raising funds and establishing a Kimberley fauna reference collection at Kununurra library for participants to identify their finds and started an id data card collection: see www.canetoads.com.au
• Participating in Kununurra Cane Toad Stakeholder Reference Group and development of the WA Cane Toad Strategy
• Increasing and disseminating lung worm parasite knowledge
• Developing a successful metamorph spraying program > fewer frontline toads than in 2005
• Producing toad reconnaissance information to WA DEC
• Supporting researchers and provided toad samples from front line toads on request anytime, and can do so because always in the field
• Paying professional photographer for formal high resolution photos of cane toads
• Engaging the media across all disciplines has been very important element of our successful awareness campaign – online, newspapers, TV and documentary, science magazines.

KTB PERPETUAL DRAFT CANE TOAD MANAGEMENT PLAN

KTBs developed a Cane Toad Management Plan for the Kimberley in early 2008 and regularly update the Plan as the toads move and they discover more about the invading cane toad. This Plan has been online for over 2 years and the latest updates were made in December 2008.

KTB INFORMATION & FACT SHEETS

	Photos: Cane toad tadpoles from very large KTB photo data bank; photos can be forwarded on request

KTBs have developed several information sheets to convey our field based research outcomes to all toadbusters and research scientist working towards eradication and control of cane toads in Australia. KTB cane toad information is on our website at www.canetoads.com.au and includes:

	Photos: Native Frog tadpole images donated by Marion Anstis.

There are few native tadpoles that are black (which means it is usually easy to tell the difference between toad tadpoles and native frog tadpoles). Even the black tadpoles of the native frogs are very different from cane toad tadpoles. This is the Marbled Frog tadpole, which is found in the East Kimberely, Limnodynastes convexiusculus seen from the top and the side.

KTB EDUCATION PRESENTATIONS

	Photo: Left field training, Photo: right Derby Rangers

Photo: below 2008 Perth Royal Show

KTBs have been giving or holding cane education and/or research presentations around Australia to cane toad research forums and community groups since 2005. This started with the Kununurra cane toad forum in March 2005 organised and held by Kimberley Specialists in Research and the most recent forum was a presentation of the KTB research outcomes to a public forum in Kununurra in June 2009. In between we have presented our research outcomes in Brisbane and Darwin; and our cane toad education package around Western Australia at the 2008 WA Royal Show and over 40 presentations to primary and high school schools, wildlife groups, aboriginal ranger training groups, Vietnam Veteran groups, seniors groups, 4WD clubs, rotary and probus clubs and more...

KTB MEDIA AND DOCUMENTARIES

	KTB 40 media releases and 28 newsletters about their campaign have generated a lot of media interest leading to countless news articles, radio and TV interviews. This in turn has raised the profile of the cane toad threat within the Western Australian community and galvanized a political response to support the KTBs.

KTB BIODIVERSITY PROJECT: WHAT’S IN YOUR BACKYARD?

In January this year, the KTBs launched their project “What’s In Your Backyard?” to motivate our community to examine and record all the native fauna that we see, and forward that record onto the KTBs. Our community is being asked to fill out fauna information cards and return them to our drop off locations. To participate it just requires each of us to: • look in our backyards • make a record on the KTB data cards • take photos and send them into photo@canetoads.com.au

KTB BROCHURES AND POSTERS: NATIVE FROG OR CANE TOAD?

Let’s not catch our native burrowing frog “Giant Frog” Cyclorana australis by mistake!
KTB have released the second edition of their popular educational brochure, which now opens into an A3 poster of our KTB definitive FROG or TOAD table, which is also on line at http://www.canetoads.com.au/toadfrog.htm

	Our posters, brochures, bookmarks and bumper stickers are available on request but if you can provide postage and handling costs, it will help us to disseminate these brochures more widely.

Please note that the WA Museum is about to publish the latest WA frogs text by authors including Paul Doughty. You can book a copy by ringing the WA museum bookshop: (08) 9427 2776 or emailing bookshop@museum.wa.gov.au

For more information on any of the articles contact:
Ruth Duncan: KTB Environmental Scientist 0400 767 650 / 08 9168 2576 biodiversity@canetoads.com.au
Lee Scott Virtue: KTB Co Founder & President 08 9168 7080 kimberleytoadbusters@canetoads.com.au
Ben Scott Virtue: KTB Field Co ordinator 08 9168 2576 admin@canetoads.com.au
Mary Anne Winton: KTB Indigenous Coordinator 0488 693 642

All donations are tax deductible.

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