Clarence Valley Conservation-in-Action (CVCIA) Landcare is gearing up for another successful cane toading season as the weather breaks from the cool winter cycle, and cane toaders get the itch to get toading once again in their continuous effort to reduce impacts of toads on native animals and pets such as dogs.

The coming season offers extra opportunity for more people to be involved in this trending Landcare pursuit where a blend of strategy, effort and hopefully some assistance from Mother Nature will continue to be the key to keeping cane toads across the lower Clarence on the hop.

Last season CVCIA Landcare volunteers collected just over 9,500 cane toads in a total of 28 Friday night sessions, which was well down on over 14,000 toads that were collected from the local environment in each of the previous two seasons.

Keen to build on these positive results of declining toad captures, whilst ensuring effective coverage across the toads full range in the lower Clarence, CVCIA Landcare is looking to recruit people from various local communities that can lead more effective toad control efforts and further tighten the grip on this much-maligned pest for the benefit of our native animals, as well as domestic pets like dogs that toads can poison and even kill.

CVCIA aims to control cane toads at all stages of their life cycle while educating our volunteers and the wider community about how to humanely and effectively participate with knowledge and new resources from leading cane toad researchers constantly being applied to ensure best practice.

For example, control of toad breeding by collecting toad tadpoles in baited traps has been one area that CVCIA has actively engaged in over recent years, with the added advantage of this method of control being a daytime activity, unlike the collection of toads that is typically a nocturnal pursuit.

Experience shows that the most effective cane toad control is achieved when we are able to focus on our own patch or locality where the combination of local knowledge, community contacts and close proximity provides extra opportunity and when many, smaller, localised community-based efforts are combined the collective results have great potential to make a more substantial difference.

So if you are motivated to positively contribute to the well-being of native animals and domestic pets, able to be active in the outdoors and have a few hours each week over the warmer months to invest in your local community working with landowners and other like-minded people either by day and/or night, then please contact Scott Lenton at CVCIA Landcare on email scott@cvcia.org.au or phone 0477 616 210 to start a conversation and see how we can join forces to win the Clarence Valley’s war against cane toads.

Scott Lenton