On hunt for toxic toads, they bagged a monster

DARWIN, Australia - An environmental group said yesterday it had captured a "monster" toxic toad the size of a small dog.

With a body as big as a football and weighing nearly 2 pounds, the toad is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer.

"It's huge, to put it mildly," he said. "The biggest toads are usually females, but this one was a rampant male. . . . I would hate to meet his big sister."

Frogwatch is dedicated to wiping out the nonnative species, which has killed countless Australian animals. Members of the group picked up the 15-inch-long cane toad during a raid on a pond outside the northern city of Darwin late Monday.

Cane toads were imported from South America during the 1930s in a failed attempt to control beetles on Australia's northern sugarcane plantations. The poisonous toads have proven fatal to Australia's delicate ecosystems, killing millions of native animals from snakes to the small crocodiles that eat them.

As part of its "Toad Buster" project, Frogwatch conducts regular raids on local water holes, blinding the toads with bright lights and then scooping them up by the dozen.

"We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer, and then put them through a liquid-fertilizer process" that renders the toads nontoxic, Sawyer said.

"It turns out to be sensational fertilizer," he added.

Raising cane: See more on the toxic toads via http://go.philly.com/canetoad EndText