In 1935, cane toads were released in far north Queensland to control beetles damaging sugar cane crops. Today, over 65,000 recorded sightings tell a very different story, stretching from Queensland across the Northern Territory and deep into Western Australia.
Each dot is a real sighting, coloured by the decade it was first recorded. Blue clusters sit on the Queensland coast in the 1940s, bleeding amber through the top end, turning red as the toad pushes into Western Australia in the 2010s and 2020s.
The toads range has expanded in two directions at once: further south into New South Wales and further west across the continent. Both lines point in the same direction: outward.
The northern quoll, a small spotted native predator, is listed as endangered. Its territory sits directly in the cane toads path. Quolls that eat toads are poisoned within minutes. Toggle the layers to see where the two species overlap.
The cane toad only reached Western Australia around 2009. Most of WAs interior remains toad-free. Scientists are now conditioning native predators with toad-laced baits, training them to avoid the real thing before the frontier advances further. For WA, the window is still open.