WA – $10,000 sniffer dog to track cane toads

A canine called ‘Nifty‘

Cane toads are about 150km from the WA border, and could invade the state by the end of next wet season.

Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) regional manager Gae McKay of the East Kimberley region says a sniffer dog trained to track cane toads will trialled in the fight against the toad.

The WA Government has awarded a $10,000 contract to a Queensland company to train the dog called ‘Nifty’. The dog will be flown to Kununurra in September for a three-month trial.

Nifty will be used to sniff out toads which have managed to hitch-hike across the Northern Territory-Western Australian border, as well as help out in the field.

Gae says “One option is to actually do what we can to eradicate cane toads from a particular area and then take the dog in and let the dog have a sniff around and, hopefully, find any of those last remaining toads that we might have missed.”

NT FrogWatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer says:

• His community-based group would also investigate training a dog to detect toads invading Darwin though it costs between $50,000 to $60,000 to train such a dog.
• The problem is the huge cost of training the sniffer dog….(but) it could be used as a way to find the area the cane toads refuge in, in the later part of the dry season….it’s something that’s worth doing.