The challenge
Cane beetle larvae were damaging Queensland’s sugar cane crops.
The case
In 1935 entomologist Reginald Mungomery of Queensland’s Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations brought 102 cane toads from Hawaii to control cane beetles. They bred in captivity, and in August 1935 about 2,400 young toads were released around Gordonvale. The plan failed: adult beetles fly and live high on the cane, while toads stay on the ground, and the toads showed little interest in the beetles. Instead the toads spread across Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and into New South Wales. A 2010 review found that some large native predators that eat the poisonous toads have declined, though no native species has gone extinct.
Why it didn't work
Releasing a new species without testing whether it would eat the target pest, or what else it would affect, turned a farm problem into a lasting national ecological one.
Sources
- Shine, R. (2010). The ecological impact of invasive cane toads (Bufo marinus) in Australia. Quarterly Review of Biology 85: 253–291.
- Canberra Times (2022). Cane toads in Australia: a short history.
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