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SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian state government called for the army to be deployed against an invasion of toxic toads. Battalions of imported cane toads are marching relentlessly across northern Australia and the West Australian government wants soldiers to intercept the environmental barbarians. State Environment Minister Mark McGowan has written to Defence Minister Brendan Nelson asking permission to use soldiers based in the neighbouring Northern Territory to kill the toads. "The army in the Northern Territory is greater than any other part of Australia," McGowan told national radio. "We'd seek the Commonwealth (federal government) to help us in fighting this...

Darwin's nightmare: Toxic toad evolves to secure supremacy Wednesday February 15, 07:13 PM PARIS (AFP) - He's fat, ugly and poisonous -- and he's mutating. He's the cane toad (Bufo marinus), a species which was introduced into the Australian state of Queensland 70 years ago to tackle insect pests in canefields and has since become an ecological catastrophe. Weighing in at to up two kilos (4.4 pounds), the unwanted anuran has extended its range to more than a million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) in tropical and sub-tropical Australia, crushing native species in its relentless A team of University of...

Hundreds of toads have met an unexplained, explosive demise in Germany in recent days, it was reported on Saturday. According to reports from animal welfare workers and veterinarians as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were propelled for up to a metre. It is like "a science fiction film", according to Werner Smolnik of a nature protection society in the northern city of Hamburg, where the phenomenon of the exploding toad has been observed. "You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding," he...

Maryland school to be built around rare toad - MAPLE RUN, Md. (AP) - It has a green snout, bleats like a sheep and is rarely seen in St. Mary's County. Despite its elusiveness, county planners have agreed to build an elementary school in a way that will accommodate the mating habits of the eastern narrow-mouthed toad that state naturalists say lives in the surrounding marshes. Minimal blacktop will be used for the school and its construction will revolve around a strict time frame set by the toad's amorous needs. "We want to have a time period on it because...

Rare toad finds unlikely ally in Republican preacher BASTROP, Texas (AP) - Bob Long describes himself as a "gun-toting, redneck, Texas Republican preacher." So it came as a surprise to some when Long, the local GOP chairman for two decades, emerged as a savior for the endangered Houston toad, a rare resident of Bastrop County that has disappeared from much of its native range in southeast and Central Texas. "I couldn't spell environmentalist," Long said in Sunday editions of the Houston Chronicle. "Now I am one." Long, working with Austin-based Environmental Defense, has volunteered to make his 550-acre ranch...