Beer bounty for cane toads

TOM Hedley, Australia's biggest private hotel owner and one of Queensland's richest men, has thrown his support behind plans to introduce a beer-for-a-bag-of-toads bounty. KEN Ritchie never thought he'd see the day a cane toad would be worth its weight in beer, let alone two.
"Hell, I'll give them two beers," said Mr Hedley, who also owns and drinks at his favourite watering hole the Red Beret.
Latest estimates are that there are between 100 and 200 million cane toads in Australia, which means at the standard Queensland "pot" glass size of 285mls, it would take 57 million litres of free beer to wipe out pest - at two toads a bag. But Mr Hedley thinks it will be money well spent.
"As far as I am concerned they're pests and a nuisance to society," said Mr Hedley.
"If offering a beer for a bag of toads is one way to wipe them out once and for all then I am all for it," he said.
The RSPCA welcomed the multi-millionaire's backing, saying the proposal could be modelled on a similar beer-for-a-toad bounty run in the Northern Territory.
"How it worked in Darwin is they brought in the toads to the RSPCA to be humanely euthanised and they were then issued a voucher to get a beer – with a daily limit on the number of beers," said RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty.
"It could be more than a gimmick. It could seriously help reduce the toad population, especially around suburbia," he said.