Hit pesky cane toads with a golf club, says MP

Wildlife officials have long agonised about ways to control the spread of Australia's worst pest, the apparently indestructible cane toad. However, an MP has sparked outrage by urging people to club the creatures to death with golf clubs and cricket bats.

Wildlife officials have long agonised about ways to control the spread of Australia's worst pest, the apparently indestructible cane toad. However, an MP has sparked outrage by urging people to club the creatures to death with golf clubs and cricket bats.

David Tollner, who lives in the Northern Territory, where cane toads have converged in recent months, said the strategy was common when he was a young man. "We hit them with cricket bats and golf clubs and the like," he said. "Back then, things were a bit different, most kids had a slug gun or an air rifle, and we'd get stuck into them with that sort of stuff."

The toads, introduced to Queensland in the 1930s, secrete poison when under threat and have killed a lot of native wild creatures.

Mr Tollner was condemned yesterday by animal welfare groups, who said the best way to kill cane toads was to put them in the freezer until they died.

Fiona Cummins, of the RSPCA in Darwin, said that bludgeoning the toads to death was inhumane and tantamount to encouraging cruelty to animals.