Cane toad sausages? It’s on the menu

When the cane toad was introduced in the 1930s to help combat beetles threatening sugar cane crops, there was no telling how much of a pest they would become.

Cane toads have caused immense destruction to the native wildlife in Queensland and have spilled over the border into New South Wales. One of the biggest problems with cane toads is that there is no natural predator to take out the introduced pest.  A new trail undertaken by the University of Sydney is trying to change this by making cane toad sausages to feed to native carnivores to help them develop a taste for the troubling amphibian.

Professor Rick Shine told Fairfax Media, “It is a simple idea and approach, but it has already proven successful in helping quolls in tropical Australia survive the invasion of cane toads even after a single episode of training.”

A solution that will hopefully stop the spread of the cane toad from doing any more damage to the delicate Australian ecosystem.

What do you think of the plan?  Do you think that it will work or should the focus be spent on other areas of control? We would love to read your thoughts on the cane toad problem in the comments below.