The Bufo Plague

Pub patrons in Australia's Queensland have long been accustomed to pass the time by tossing burning cigarette butts out the window, or Ping Pong balls, or whatever other small objects come to hand. Outside, likely as not, sits an all-purpose mini garbage-disposal unit called Bufo marinus, and the beer quaffers amuse themselves by watching this undiscriminating toad gobble up almost anything coming its way.

The Bufo, a South American native, was drafted into Queensland service by way of Hawaii in 1935 to help get rid of the cane beetle that was threatening the sugar fields. The Aussies got more than they hoped for. Supplementing its diet with varied and copious helpings of other insects and frogs, the cane toad may live for 40 years, grow to be eight inches long and three pounds in weight, produce up to 40,000 eggs a year, kill cats and dogs with a glandular poison it secretes, and upset the natural balance of some areas.

The toads have hitherto been confined to Queensland, in northeastern Australia, because dry areas adjoining the state hamper them from moving out to neighboring territory. But last month they turned up in two other places in Australia and promptly set off an all out toad hunt. When 18 Bufos escaped from a consignment to a biology teacher at steamy Darwin, in the Northern Territory, it was immediately clear that not all Australians regard the amphibian gourmands with the equanimity of Queenslanders, who have grown used to skidding in their cars along toad-covered roads. The cane toad, said one member of the Northern Territory Legislative Council, is "loathsome and repulsive," and the council rushed through a bill anathematizing it as "an outlaw ... a pest to be destroyed on sight."

Support came quickly from more scientific but equally alarmed sources.

"Bufo marinus is a vacuum cleaner.

There could be an evolution explosion in the wet season," said Herpetologist Michael Tyler. "It could get into billa-bongs [river pools] and replace the native species." Worse still, added John Lake, director of the Northern Territory's Department of Forestry, Fisheries, Wild Life and National Parks, "it would threaten our smaller native species--and that's equivalent to threatening the koala and the platypus."

To head off such a national calamity, the Wild Life Department came up with a bounty of $30 per Bufo, and the Darwin Conservation Society put up another $7.50. When angry cattle farmers, fearing that the toads would eat the dung beetles that eat disease-spreading flies, demanded that the education department pay a $1,500 reward for each toad, the federal government in Canberra countered that such an absurdly high bounty might lead to the clandestine import of more toads from Queensland. Anticipating that, the Northern Territory promised to fine all Bufo bootleggers.

Meanwhile, across the continent in Perth, the capital of Western Australia, buzzes of anguish rose from local apiarists (Bufo marinus, of course, also relishes bees), when several specimens got away from another consignment from Queensland. These Bufos, however, were quickly isolated near Perth Airport, and it remains only for authorities to check adjacent drainage every two days for the next three years to make sure that the toads or their progeny get no further.

Back in Darwin, things were not going SO well. WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE announced posters distributed throughout the tropical city. As tune passes, the authorities are becoming bolder, or more desperate. Says Lake: "I'll try anything."

With five specimens of Bufo marinus still at large in the Northern Territory, the toad posses are counting on Bufo's well-known amorous proclivities to do him in. A local radio station will broadcast a recording of the male Bufo marinus' bass mating call in a last drainage-ditch attempt to lure lovesick and fecund female toads.

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