Rangers in the Torres Strait work to get ahead of toad sightings

It's a delicate balancing act for personnel desperately trying to halt the destructive toad's spread, while preserving native frogs.

Senior Natural Resources Officer, Ranger Supervisor Troy Laza takes a test from a local waterway.

Rangers in the Torres Strait are walking the line, trying to keep cane toads off their islands as recent sightings and a deluge of rain prompts fears of the nasty pest spreading.

On Waiben (Thursday Island) and Ngurupai (Horn Island), where toads have been established for almost a decade, schools of tadpoles are exploding in every catch and crevice.

Five months ago, a confirmed toad sighting on Badu Island sent rangers into overdrive, as they tried – without success – to find the warty, poisonous pest.

Senior Ranger and Maluilgal nation man, Laurie Nona, said rangers have so far been unable to locate the toad.

Senior Ranger Laurie Nona says toads pose one of the biggest risks to culture.

“The rangers really quickly got on to it, [with] spotlight checks at night using cane toad mating calls to attract them,” he said.

“We had special traps set all over the village, in and around waterways and that sort of thing.”

He said rangers were now working with James Cook University’s Trop Water to begin eDNA testing for toads on the large island.

“If a toad has been in the water, that test can find out if a toad has been in that waterhole, even if it was only there for a minute,” he said.

Badu Island is one of 14 inhabited outer islands that have managed to remain toad-free since toads established on Waiben and Ngurupai in the 2000s.

The Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) has funded JCU Tropwater to test eDNA samples from the Torres Strait annually for several years, and so far no tests have returned positive results.

NITV understands there have been recent confirmed sightings on more of the outer islands, but no reports of established populations.

Risk to cultural way of life

Waiben’s local council hosts toad busting nights for families to help keep numbers down.

Toads can lay up to 30,000 eggs at a time, and their larvae are just as poisonous to ingest as a tadpole or an adult toad.

“So when you think about that, every stage of [their] life, nothing can be a predator to them,” said Mr Nona.

“Knowing that is very, very scary.”

We could lose the Karbai, forever severing ties to our ancestors’ traditional ways.

Mr Nona said the risk to cultural and community way of life was real.

“All our birds of the sky, our snakes, everything on the land,” he said.

“Karbai (Great Egret) is the white stalk or the white heron. It's always around the creeks and around the puddles, eating small fish and tadpoles.”

Mr Nona said the Karbai provide a pure white feather used in traditional Dhoeri headdress.

“If cane toads established on Badu, we could lose the Karbai, forever severing ties to our ancestors’ traditional ways."

However, he said much of the island's ecosystem depended on the tadpoles of native toads and frogs.

“We've got hawks and eagles, ground-dwelling birds like little quails, that might eat baby tadpoles or egg.

“We've got little gidi gidi ducks ... that survive on the fish that are in there, yabbies that are in there and kaikai (eat) the tadpoles and frogs here.

“We've got the green monitor here that's very rare, they eat baby frogs.

“We want to we want to stay toad free, [but also] we want to preserve our way of life.”

Leading control methods used

Ranger Nabako Laza collecting water sample for eDNA analysis on badu.

The scare comes as a cane toad found on Mornington Island earlier this month initiated a biosecurity crackdown.

Queensland's Senior Project Officer for Biosecurity, Michael Zitha, said he got the call from rangers there to ask about measures used in the Torres Strait.

“I just gave him information on this is what we do up here and said if they need any assistance or support, I can help them out,” he said.

Mr Zitha said some years back there was another scare on Badu, where a toad was caught but turned out to be a native species.

“We always want communities to be allies in is they find something that they haven't seen before something new, take a photo report to the Rangers or biosecurity staff,” she said.

“It's hard to control because they need water and as you know the waters on the Torres Strait and Horn Island are in dam.”

Michael Zitha says the warty pests can easily hide on vessels and be transported.

Mr Nona said the rangers would stop at nothing to ensure Badu remained toad-free.

“We did lectures to the school kids in and around knowing the difference between the toad and the marum-katube (burrowing native frog), which is the frog that buries himself,” he said.

“From a community level, as people of outer islands and the Torres Strait, we need to be also vigilant,

“We travel between horn island and TI, and please check your boats because we might have a hitch hiker there inside.”