has removed anywhere up to 229 million cane toads from getting into the environment.
The group, Watergum, said that earlier this year, community members from throughout Australia united for a common cause in what was dubbed “The great cane toad bust”.
“Over the course of one action-packed week, 1101 dedicated individuals joined forces successfully collecting 19,665 cane toads,” the organisation said.
“This remarkable endevour has resulted in preventing an estimated 52,440,000 and 229,425,000 future cane toad offspring from entering our delicate ecosystem.”
The current population of cane toads is estimated at 200 million and each female can produce 20,000 eggs in a year and have spread to northern NSW and the Northern Territory.
The group has another blitz scheduled for the start of 2024.
The group also has a licence from the University of Queensland to sell a cane toad tadpole trap which lures the tadpoles into a device for collection.
They collected 20.000 out of 20.000.000, that is 0.1%. If 20.000 can spawn up to 229.000.000, how does that even make a dent right now if the remaining 19.980.000 toads can still reproduce.
I mean great they do this, but it seems they have a very long way to go before writing such positive messages. Also, next raid 2024, haven’t the toads been reproducing anyway in the meantime?
Yeah, those numbers are very questionable.
But it’s a good cause, and every bit helps, with possibly a significant difference in the local areas targeted.
That is a good point, if a local area has been depleted of 90% of toads and there is no massive migration from other areas this will habe great impact locally. Didn’t really come out of this article though.