WfHC - cover page (not to be used with pre-printed report ... - CSIRO

Cecil Hughes: Yes, you never saw them.
---------------------------------------
Marcus Barber: Were there still goannas in that country?
Paddy Yam: Yes.
Marcus Barber: Because Cecil was talking about the cane toads coming, when the cane
toads came.
Paddy Yam: Oh he was still there [when the toads came], that old feller [Cecil Hughes]].
You couldn‟t find any goannas. They were killing „em. Young feller comes [to Koolatah],
David [Hughes]. David said „hey what‟s killing all them goannas?‟ Where? There along the
ridge there. He chase one and kill one. He was the man, running that place then.
Marcus Barber: So what else happened when the cane toads came?
Paddy Yam: Not even a blue tongue. [You] could not see them. Wanguw. 27 [You] could not
even see where they gone. Now they all gone. Seen a few fish. Same goanna where
getting away.
Marcus Barber: Cecil said some of the fish were dying from eating the small ones.
Paddy Yam: Eating the small ones yeah. [But] they get used to it, them fish, and they know
that toad, that its poison, so they won‟t touch it. Even the goanna, they won‟t touch it.
[There are] goannas everywhere now - bluetongue, wanguw.
---------------------------------------
Marcus Barber: Did you see goannas and things around when you were mustering Oriners
in the 80s?
Colin Hughes: No. You‟d hardly see any. Even snakes for that matter. Snakes and
goannas. Probably [for] 6 or 8 years. [Now] the old goannas are back in force. I guess
they‟ve become immune to them [the toads] or worked out how to eat them.
Marcus Barber: So from your point of view it is only really in the last ten years or so that
that recovery has happened?
Colin Hughes: Yeah.
There is a clear and consistent pattern in the comments above across both the Indigenous
and non-Indigenous cattlemen. The toads arrived in the area in the 1960s, dramatically
decreasing the population of a range of reptile species in such a way that the population
recovery has only occurred relatively recently. Michael Ross, Robert Burns, and Fred
Coleman felt that the effect on bird species was less severe as they had learned how to
avoid the animals, or eat the animals in such a way as to avoid the poison. In 2.2.5 Paddy
Yam commented that the fish had rapidly learned to avoid juvenile toads after their initial
arrival had caused mass fish kills. However rather than just a general recovery, Viv
Sinnamon described the regional increase in reptile numbers as an „explosion‟:
That cane toad thing, we‟ve always thought of Oriners as having a higher population of
goannas than Kowanyama. Right now, down on the coast there has been an incredible
increase. Well generally there has been an increase in goannas, but down on the coast
there has been an explosion. And there has also been more blue tongue lizards seen in the
last 3 years than have been seen in the last 20 years. So both lizards are doing pretty well.
Whether it‟s the cane toads or something else I don‟t know. Cane toads occupy burrows
whether or not you eat them. They occupy burrows, so how they‟re getting around that
issue I don‟t know. Because anything that lives inside a burrow with babies is in trouble,
27 Tree goanna, Varanus tristis
Working Knowledge at Oriners Station, Cape York
84