Australian group captures 'monster' toad

An environmental group dedicated to wiping out a toxic toad species that has killed countless Australian animals has captured a specimen the size of a small dog.

The volunteer-run organization, Frogwatch, picked up the 40-centimeter-long (15-inch-long) cane toad during a raid on a pond outside the northern city of Darwin yesterday.

With a body the size of a football and weighing nearly 1 kilogram, the "monster toad" is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer.

"It's huge, to put it mildly," he said. "The biggest toads are usually females but this one was a rampant male ... I would hate to meet his big sister."

Cane toads were imported from South America during the 1930s in a failed attempt to control beetles on Australia's northern sugar cane plantations. The poisonous toads have proven fatal to Australia's delicate ecosystems, killing millions of native animals from snakes to the small crocodiles that eat them.

As part of its so-called "Toad Buster" project, Frogwatch conducts regular raids on local water holes, blinding the toads with bright lights then scooping them up by the dozen.

"We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process" that renders the toads nontoxic, Sawyer said.

"It turns out to be sensational fertilizer," he added.