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of ockers and toads...From the BBC Nick Bryant Kangaroos skipping playfully through the bush, a barbie on the beach, a brace of surfers waiting for the first big wave of the day, a local pub "where everyone's your mate," a sea plane skimming over the Great Barrier Reef, an Aborginal elder stood in front of Uluru, a ferry carving through Sydney harbour, with the Opera House and bridge in the background, and, of course, the mandatory koala. All to the bouncy refrain of a catchy new song, "There's Nothing Like Australia". I speak, of course, of Tourism Australia's long-awaited new global advertisement, where no cliché and stereotype is left un-reinforced. It appears to have been cobbled together by Paul Hogan and Barry "Bazza" McKenzie after a long night on the grog, with the occasional idea hurled in by Sir Les Patterson and pictures gleaned from the past 10 years of Qantas in-flight advertisements. Needless to say, I think it's brilliant. I've long thought, and have written before, that Tourism Australia could save itself a lot of money by simply re-running Paul Hogan's "C'mon Say G'day" campaign, which was such a smash hit in the 1980s. The reason is simple: the rest of the world loves the very clichés which make many Australians cringe. Regular readers of this blog already know how sophisticated, fashionable and up-to-moment I think you all are. But that discovery comes as an added bonus for visitors. When most tourists touch down in Australia they want to have caught sight of a koala, and ideally a kangaroo as well, by lunchtime. "Stone the crows, are they fair dinkum about this flamin' ad?" asks the Sydney Morning Herald, in which the writer Rick Feneley suggests the new ad "casts us as a nation of tone-deaf bogans caught in a '70s time-warp." On the blogosphere some have already described the ad as "bogan pride at its best", and "cringeworthy". Another commentator asks: "When will we shake these dowdy, 50-year-old stereotypes?" http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/nickbryant/2010/06/the_ocker_shocker.html ---------------------- Meanwhile in the bush... -------------------- A group working to control cane toad numbers in the Northern Territory says more than 90 million toads are throwing the food chain into disarray. FrogWatch NT says more than 92 million cane toads across the Territory are eating 18 billion food items every night. The group says the competition for food is one of the reasons so many native species are in decline. Research conducted by the group last year found an average of 209 toads per square kilometre in Territory savanna areas. "FrogWatch finished in December last year some research in 110 square kilometres of savanna woodland," said FrogWatch coordinator and Darwin Lord Mayor, Graeme Sawyer. "We spent a fair bit of time and effort trying to eradicate every single cane toad in that area and we got just over 23,000 cane toads." He says the group then extrapolated that data across other savanna areas in the Territory to come up with the figure of 92 million toads. "We realise there's huge risks in that sort of mathematics but we used some fairly conservative estimates on numbers so the reality is probably a higher number of cane toads than that." ----------------------- Gus: for those who've never seen a cane toad, some of them are as big as a dog... No... just jocking but some of them are "monstruous"...
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come and see for yourself...
picture by Gus...
Come and visit this beautiful country (I mean it) and take a few dead trophy toads as souvenirs from your visit... Invite all your friends to do the same... eventually we'll have this toad plague licked..
offending tourism...
Australia has launched an advertising campaign to accompany tough new laws on sex tourism.
Adverts have been placed in national newspapers that warn offenders they can be prosecuted in Australia even if their crimes are committed elsewhere.
The measures include jail terms of up to 25 years for Australians found guilty of sex crimes against children in foreign countries.
Charities in Australia have welcomed the tougher stance.
Hetty Johnston from the Queensland-based child protection charity, Bravehearts, says sex tourists should have no place to hide.
"What we know is that it is increasingly difficult for sex offenders to get away with their crimes in Australia because of the increased level of awareness," she said.
"So it is an option - and a very attractive option - for child-sex offenders to actually travel overseas to places where children are not so protected.
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Meanwhile at the toad front...:
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Hopping mad idea
Darwin's Lord Mayor, Graeme Sawyer, says it would be a fantastic experience for tourists to hunt and kill cane toads ("Who ya gonna call? Toadbusters", June 7). A Northern Territory politician's recommended methods include cricket bats and golf clubs. There is something terribly wrong when a person can take pleasure in killing another creature, when bludgeoning an animal to death is popular with tourists. Yes, the cane toads must go, but we introduced them, and we have a moral duty to solve the problem humanely – and more effectively.
Cheryl Forrest-Smith Mona Vale
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see toon at top...
the rampageous cane toads
There has been an alarming drop in numbers of the northern quoll with the arrival of the cane toad in its habitat.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-03/northern-quoll-threatened-by-cane-toads/3757428?WT.svl=news5
see toon at top...
the new cane toad in waiting...
Two European species of dung beetle have been imported into Australia to help break down the cow pats of the country's 28 million cattle.
The French beetles will be quarantined for two years, as part of a CSIRO project.
Biosecurity Australia requires that only the eggs, and not the imported insects, be distributed across the country to return dung to the soil to improve fertility.
The insects will build colonies and produce eggs ahead of their release in the spring months, when other dung beetle species in Australia are inactive.
Researcher Dr Jane Wright says the little powerhouses of the paddock must go through a lot before the eggs can be distributed to cattle producers.
"We had to engage special couriers to ship the beetles from France to Australia," she said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-08/french-dung-beetle-jets-to-oz-for-important-work/4059870?WT.svl=news3
Why don't we get some unemployed people (pay them, of course) to go and collect all dry cowpats and use them for a gigantic biodynamic farming practice in Aussieland... instead of trying to implement another bio-catastrophe like the cane toads?
cane toad 1 - croc 0
Cane toads have wiped out some populations of dwarf crocodiles in northern Australia.
Charles Darwin University researchers have been investigating the impact of the toxic toads on Australia's smallest freshwater crocodiles.
Their studies have centred on upstream escarpments around the Victoria and Bullo rivers.
Dr Adam Britton says the dwarf crocodiles found in upstream stretches of the river are small because their growth is stunted by a lack of food.
The spread of the introduced cane toads through the Top End has seen a plentiful but deadly addition to their diet.
The population of the crocs, sometimes referred to a pygmy crocodiles, is thought to number in the hundreds.
Dr Britton says steps need to be taken to ensure the survival of the unusual crocodiles, which rarely reach more than one metre in length.
"We really don't know whether these cane toads are going to wipe them out completely," he said.
"We know that the initial impact of the toads is very severe.
"The question is, will the crocodile populations be able to deal with this and be able to recover?"
Dr Britton says the spread of the cane toads presents a significant conservation issue for the entire upstream escarpment ecosystems of northern Australia...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-03/cane-toads-killing-dwarf-crocs-in-north-cdu-research/4796026
I am not an expert, thus I am not surprised...
An outback roadhouse has become the frontline for the cane toads' push into southern Australia, with the amphibians surprising the experts by adapting to cool, dry conditions and building up to plague proportions.
The Renner Springs Desert Inn along the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory was previously thought to be too far south for the cane toads to live, but co-owner Alan Revell said masses of the animals now called the area home.
"Certainly there were hundreds and hundreds at any given time," Mr Revell said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-24/cane-toads-push-to-colder-south-surprises-experts/5621946
canberra's cane toads protecting feral cane toads...
'It's devastating. It's tearing the place apart.'
Forget feral cats, says Graeme Sawyer; cane toads are threatening to destroy Northern Territory wildlife and its ecology.
Mr Sawyer is a member of Frogwatch, a group of researchers, conservationists and volunteers who work to stop the spread of cane toads across the region.
He suggests cane toads have brought some native species to the point of localised extinction in the Top End, but of most concern is how little is known about the broader damage they might be causing.
'One of the saddest things is that we don't know the full extent of the impact yet,' said Mr Sawyer.
As Frogwatch's contracted $200,000 of government funding now comes to an end, so too could the school visits and community sessions that form a central part of the program.
Mr Sawyer says in the town of Palmerston near Darwin, the sessions had led some families to conduct weekly 'toad-busts' to contain their population numbers.
'It just shows the huge amount of community concern and the ability for the community to respond to these things,' he said.
'If it's coordinated and facilitated properly, it can be a really positive force for the environment.
'Quite small amounts of funding are massively amplified through the community.'
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bushtelegraph/cane-toad-problem-bigger-than-feral-cats/5865268
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Of course the cane toads in charge of policies in Canberra — the Abbottus Turdus regimenii bloated specimen — are now protecting the invasion of cane toads in this country by not renewing essential funding to study and eradicate the dangerous blithers...
freezing to death...
Tossing cane toads into the freezer causes them no pain and is the most humane way to get rid of the amphibian pests — but just make sure they don't thaw out too soon.
That is the message from Australian scientists who used pain-sensing electrodes wired into toads' brains to find out whether freezing them — a method long-condemned as inhumane by animal ethics groups — was the best way to go.
Researchers implanted small electrodes in the brains of cane toads and then put them into a refrigerator for a few hours, before transferring them to a household freezer.
Professor Rick Shine from the University of Sydney said the toads quietly slipped into unconsciousness as they were transformed into toadsicles, and the toad's brains did not register any evidence of pain during the entire process.
"What we saw was that the toad's brains just switched off," he said.
"By the time they went into the freezer there was almost nothing happening and it slowly went down.
"The difficulty is of course, you can't ask a cane toad if something hurts.
"People have used all kinds of indirect measures ... this was really the 24-carat gold way to measure what's happening inside a toad's brain when you're doing something to it."
But Professor Shine warned the toads had to be kept in the freezer for days, otherwise they could defrost and come back to life.
"Make sure it's in the fridge for a few hours so that it's not going to feel pain when it goes into the freezer," he said.
read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-26/scientists-find-that-toads-placed-in-freezer-feel-no-pain/6496918
See story and toon at top...
toads of the northernville...
First Dog on the Moon
In the epic battle between cane toads and native northern quolls, science may just have given the quolls a fighting chance for a comeback
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/17/science-is-back-to-help-educate-quolls-about-cane-toads-with-sausages
decimating kakadu...
Biodiversity in Kakadu National Park has been "decimated" by cane toads in recent years, with some species disappearing from sight altogether, according to one of the NT's leading toad experts.
Key points:Graeme Sawyer from Biodiversity Watch levelled the blame for the toads' destruction of Kakadu on a Commonwealth Government that he said had "its head in the sand" in dealing with the issue.
Mr Sawyer last week told a parliamentary inquiry into controlling cane toads that the "devastation on the wildlife out [in Kakadu] is something you have to see to believe".
"When you look at country up here — like those places in Kakadu along the Jim Jim Creek in the areas where I've been doing my research, and just hanging out for the last 30 years around Mount Ringwood station — the impact of toads 15 to 20 years in is unbelievable," he told the Canberra inquiry.
The Commonwealth has "dropped the ball" completely on cane toad management in the Territory's Top End, he said.
Cane toads, a deadly pest first introduced to Australia to help eradicate sugar cane beetles in the 1930s, first reached Kakadu in the early 2000s.
Read more:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-20/cane-toad-inquiry-graeme-sawyer-b...
The Kanbra Toads, political relatives to the Cane Toads, approve of the devastation. This glorious infestation brings down the numbers of vulnerable species (now gone bung) to look after when mining companies want to dig.
Read from top.