Drying out the cane toad invasion

"In June 1935, the cane toad began its invasion of Australia. Sailors brought the animal over from Hawaii in an attempt to control the cane beetle that was ravaging Australia’s sugar cane crops. It was a mistake that the continent’s wildlife would pay for. The toad did nothing to stop the beetles. Instead, it launched its own invasion, spreading across the continent from its north-eastern point of entry. As it marched, it left plummeting populations of native species in its wake.
The toads are born conquerors. Females can lay 35,000 eggs many times a year, and each can develop into a new frog in less than 10 weeks. They’re unfussy eaters and they’ll munch away on bird eggs, smaller native frogs and more. And they have large glands behind their heads, which secrete a milky poison. Local predators (or domestic pets) that try to eat them tend to die.
Now, Daniel Florance from the University of Sydney has found a clever way of corralling the cane toad invasion. He realised that humans have continued to give the toad a hand, long after we first brought them to Australia. By creating dams and troughs, we provided the toad with watery staging grounds that allowed it to spread across otherwise impassably dry land."

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