New paper on ‘toad-proofing farms’ gaining attention
PBG’s Judy Dunlop, Ben Phillips, and Andrew Coates (along with their co-authors) recently published a paper titled ‘Leap, frog: Toad-proof agricultural infrastructure for landscape-level management of cane toads.’ in Global Ecology and Conservation available here. The paper outlines how the invasive cane toad is reliant on agricultural water infrastructure during the dry season in arid Australia, details the capability of cane toads to jump or climb into cattle troughs, and proposes solutions to amend this infrastructure to exclude cane toads from accessing the water. Such upgrades are the key technology enabling the Toad Containment Zone and, if applied more broadly across the semi-arid rangelands, could reduce the range of cae toads by around 30%.
The paper is quickly gaining media attention. You can read the media release from Curtin here
