9:19am UK, Monday April 11, 2005

Poisonous toads causing a menace across northern Australia should be clubbed to death with cricket bats and golf clubs, an MP has said.

David Tollner's crude tactic has understandably outraged animal rights campaigners.

180 cane toad

Mad, bad cane toad

But the Liberal Party politician said the method for dispatching cane toads proved successful when he was a child.

Mr Tollner, member for the Northern Territory, told ABC radio: "We hit them with cricket bats and golf clubs and the like.

"I think if people could be encouraged rather than discouraged (to attack them) the better the chance will be of stopping the cane toads."

Cane toads were introduced into Queensland state in the 1930s to control beetles that were ravaging sugar cane fields.

But the toads now number in the millions and are spreading westward into the Northern Territory, posing a deadly danger to native wildlife.

Their threat, however, does not warrant death by four iron, said the Australian RSPCA.

Chief executive Fiona Cummins said the fear was Mr Tollner's advice may see such attacks carried out on other animals.

She said: "We've had cases recently in Darwin where we've had children having violent acts towards bats; interstate we've had violence towards kittens."