6,000 toads busted

Kimberley Toad Busters with the help of Conservation Australia Volunteers have busted more than 6,000 toads on Victoria River Downs Station in the last couple of weeks. Last weekend's reconnaissance and toad busting finally sourced the second major 'corridor' toads had used to access VRD during the wet and helped to explain why there were so many toads present on VRD in such a short space of time. The toads not only managed to use the Victoria River system to facilitate their movement south towards VRD during the last wet season but also used the Battle Creek catchment area to travel west onto VRD. Battle Creek was aptly named. Kimberley Toad Busters 'working' this general area last weekend came away thinking the whole experience had felt a little like 'Custers last stand'. The ground around the creeks and billabongs appeared to 'literally' move from the sheer number of toads present on the ground, and no matter how many toads were picked up there 'appeared' to be equally as many present again within minutes. While the task of 'busting' such huge numbers appears to be somewhat daunting, even more horrifying is the thought of what the Kimberley will face if we don't do anything to mitigate this onslaught. KTB's have now taken around 28,000 toads out of the system as well as tens of thousands of eggs, tadpoles and metamorphs.