Trip 19: Perth to Walford Creek and Lawn Hill
National Park
Purpose: Biological Survey and eDNA Research
Total
Distance Traveled: 7, 474 km
Distance
Traveled Year to Date: 69, 097 km
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| Not looking the best! |
I remember exactly where I was,
exactly when it was and exactly how I felt when I saw the first cane toad cross
the border into W.A. I was guttered. I made a vlog about it called BorderCrossing and the pain on my face was not a put on. When I watch it now it still
makes me shudder. That night I said goodbye to all that I adored about the
Kimberley: the fresh water crocodiles, the massive Mulga Snakes (King Browns)
and the giant plains goannas Varanus panoptes. I knew they would all be gone in
a few short years and I was right: it was March 2010.
Fast forward to 2015 and I saw a
glimmer of hope when I first travelled to far north-west Queensland. The toads
have been there for more than 30 years and the native fauna are coping. No:
they are fighting back. Make no mistake, there are toads everywhere; they are
still thick on the ground, but many of the predatory bird species and some of
the goannas have figured out how to eat them and avoid the toxins. Other
animals have simply decided not to eat them at all despite their ease of access
and abundance as a food source.
Fast forward to 2017 and things
are looking still better again. Or are they? This was the first year I have
worked in FNWQ in the late dry / early wet and all I saw was death; but not the
natives. Dead toads everywhere. There were toads scrambling for refuge and
cramming themselves into the smallest nook or cranny where moisture prevailed.
Those that lived looked shocking and those that didn’t make it were littered across
the landscape, all dry and crispy like the leaves of deciduous trees that fall in
Autumn.
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| Count the dead toads. |
I don’t hate toads. I admire them
as an example of accelerated evolution and phenotypic plasticity. But I hate
what they do; the damage they cause. I am not a horrible person, but I could
not help but feel some relief when I saw so many struggling for survival; even
in places where water was available. It was odd. I could not help but wonder if
something more significant was going on?
I know I am waxing lyrical here,
but this is my blog spot and, therefore, I can and will. Could this species
have over-evolved and somehow gone off the rails? Maybe the primary prey items
(invertebrates) are scarce this time of year? Certainly, the iconic frill-neck
lizard aestivates over the dry when food resources are low and the air is dry,
accelerating water loss through cutaneous evaporation and evapotranspiration. I guess that could be true, but the receding
water bodies were swarming with water borne or water dependent insects casting
some doubt on that inference.
I kept trying to think logically about what
could be going on; right up to the point where I saw multiple males in amplexus
with rotting dead females. Yes. Rotting dead females. With absolutely no
explanation for this behaviour, which I witnessed on multiple occasions during
the survey, I resolved myself to the one and only thing I know to be true: the
more I learn about nature the less I know.
