A
By Amy Greenbank and Ethan Rix
Tammie Farrugia and Scott Marshall are the pair allegedly named in a search warrant used by police investigating the explosives laden caravan at Dural.
Ms Farrugia was charged last week over a separate alleged antisemitic attack at Woollahra in December.
She remains in custody.
Mr Marshall also remains in custody on unrelated weapons and drug charges.
According to the ABC report the alleged male was in custody in January when the caravan was located.
Devastating news for conservatives as the two named do not have Arabic/muslim names.
Wot?
There are doubts he is a he?
You wouldn’t think those two were the brains behind the operation would you? Maybe there is some more to it regarding overseas influence offering $$$ etc.
They are probably more like the drug mules.
That’s how I’m reading it. Those responsible for masterminding this event appear to be at large. Although it sounds to me like they will be apprehended shortly (
)
maybe they would have already been apprehended if the telegraph didn’t blow the operation by leaking it
Meanwhile, in Northern Queenstoadland…
Photograph: Trent Parke / Magnum Photos
The Economist.
Jan 22nd 2025
Townsville, Queensland
THIS WEEK, between January 18th and 27th, thousands of volunteers in a band of territory stretching across north-eastern Australia from Darwin to Brisbane are venturing into the night with torches and collecting-buckets. They are taking part in the Great Cane Toad Bust, an annual attempt to keep a lid on the population of these invasive, toxic amphibians. Toads thus caught will be killed humanely by being chilled in refrigerators and then frozen.
Popular though this toad-busting party is, however, it is not very effective. The toad’s prolific breeding habits soon replace such losses. To do the job properly, other methods are needed. And one which is gaining ground is tadpole trapping.
Toads live in dense populations, and their tadpoles are not above cannibalising the eggs of others, attracted by a chemical signal they release. Scientists at the University of Queensland, in Brisbane, have isolated this substance to develop lures for tadpole traps. Six thousand of these traps have now been made and sold by Watergum, a local conservation charity.
Cannibalism is one of several weaknesses discovered during years of studying how these Latin American amphibians have adapted to their new home. Combining such knowledge with genetic technologies has brought hope of slowing, or even reversing, the relentless invasion.
The problem began in 1935, when 101 cane toads were brought to northern Queensland in a failed attempt to control pesky beetles that were eating the local sugarcane. Tens of thousands of reinforcements were added in subsequent years and, with few natural checks, the animals bred and spread. Well over 200m toads are thought to live in Australia today, hopping determinedly across most of the tropical north and halfway down the east coast.
This population explosion has had serious ecological consequences. Cane toads secrete a substance called bufotoxin from glands in their shoulders. This can be lethal to native wildlife, which has evolved no protection. Predatory marsupials, freshwater crocodiles, monitor lizards (known as goannas) and several of Australia’s most venomous snakes suffer as the toads move in. In some places, up to 90% of goannas vanished upon the toads’ arrival. The disappearance of these large predators distorts entire ecosystems. Prey species boom. Smaller predators go unchecked. Carrion is left to rot.
Attempts to control the toads have been going on for decades, yet their advance has accelerated. In the tropics, they now travel up to 70km westward every wet season, compared with 10km when they first arrived. They are thus poised to enter some of Western Australia’s most treasured ecological areas.
Toad biologists call this acceleration the Olympic Village effect. It is a superb example of evolution in action. Only the most athletic toads make it to the invasion front, where they breed. Over the generations, toads on the front have thus developed larger size, longer legs and even an urge to travel in a single direction.
Armed with this knowledge, some propose dropping toads from the core population onto the invasion’s front line. These toads are less physically impressive but much more competitive breeders. The hope is to dilute the athleticism of the front-line toads and thus slow the advance, a process called genetic backburn.
Other genetic solutions are in development. Tadpole cannibalism has inspired a team at Macquarie University to engineer “Peter Pan” tadpoles, so called because the genes which allow them to grow up into adults have been disabled. Releasing hungry swarms of these should keep pools clear of toad eggs for years.
The genetic changes involved are so cautious that Peter Pan tadpoles are not even recognised as genetically modified organisms under Australian law. The affected genetic material in them is being deactivated, rather than added to. And the fact that the animals do not mature means changes cannot be passed on to a new generation. “We’re very carefully testing reactions of native fauna to our non-metamorphosing tadpoles before we talk about releasing them in the wild,” explains Rick Shine, the team’s leader. “We’re trying not to repeat the folly of 1935.”
Turning tadpoles against their own kind is far less labour-intensive than trapping them. However, even Peter Pans die eventually, and must be replaced. So this is not a permanent fix.
Thus far, the new tadpoles have been confined to the laboratory. But New South Wales and the Northern Territory have given permission for them to be tested in the field. The first sites are likely to be small isolated ponds in the Northern Territory, where the team already conducts research, with release happening at the end of this wet season, in March or April. Meanwhile, work continues to scale up the production of tadpoles from a few thousand now to the tens of thousands.
But it is not only the toad that is ripe for genetic engineering. A team at the University of Melbourne, led by Andrew Pask, has partnered with Colossal Biosciences, a genetics company in Dallas, Texas, to create gene-edited marsupial cells resistant to bufotoxin. In a preprint last year on bioRxiv, the researchers proved they could replace part of a gene in the fat-tailed dunnart, a small marsupial, with a modification found in African and Asian monitor lizards known to be resistant to toad toxins. The results showed a 45-fold increase in resistance to bufotoxin. The team’s hope is that they can replicate this in their target species, the endangered northern quoll.
Quolls, which resemble ferrets, are the largest carnivorous marsupials left on the Australian mainland. Northern quolls currently exist in isolated groups either behind or immediately ahead of the toad front line. Though quolls are also threatened by habitat loss and introduced predators such as foxes and feral cats, studies show the arrival of toads crashes their populations. A toxin-resistant quoll would not only survive the toads’ arrival, but might also actively hunt them, thus reducing their numbers. The team hope something similar may also be possible with other predators, such as goannas.
Genetics is already widely used in conservation—for example to monitor elusive species or support breeding programmes. But gene modifications have not been employed in the wild before. “This is really the first demonstration of gene editing for wildlife-conservation purposes to target an anthropogenic problem that we’ve created,” says Professor Pask.
His team reckon a toxin-resistant quoll could be ready for release in as little as five years, though the exact schedule will depend on approval by regulators. Peter Pan tadpoles already have the green light. But the gene-edited quoll, the DNA of which would be changed in ways that could (and ideally would) be inherited, is likely to face higher hurdles. More sophisticated forms of genetic engineering, in particular ones that allow for traits to spread rapidly through a population, will be an even tougher sell. But desperate times require desperate measures. ■
So one of these two have previous form regarding anti semitism based on what you posted @IceTemple. Will be interesting to see where this leads to. The PM referenced last week a line of inquiry regarding foreign actors paying local criminals to undertake acts of terrorism and anti semitic crimes.
Hard to believe these two acted alone which I’m sure the police are investigating - however they do have form regarding anti semitism.
I saw a Gardening Australia segment on these tadpole traps. It’s one of those ideas which is so simple but incredibly complex.
The only issue is that it can accidentally lure in other species, so recommended that people check before dispatching the tadpoles. But otherwise, it seems a really easy to use device, and it can capture thousands at a time.
I remember years ago when I was posted to Townsville and was driving home one night it looked like the entire road in front of me was shaking. When I stopped and got out of the car, it was a massive swarm of cane toads crossing the road like a gross carpet. There must have been thousands of them in a small patch of road. Cane toads, rabbits, cats, dogs, foxes, pigs, deer - we really have done a magnificent job of farking up our ecosystem.
I understand the caravan had been located in the position it was found for a period of time before the police entered the caravan and found explosives and target list.
This is the reason why locals alerted police about the caravan. It wasn’t just parked there the day the police entered the caravan based on the reports I’ve heard.
Therefore I’m not sure of the relevance of the whereabouts of the alleged male the day the police entered or located the caravan. Are you suggesting because he was in custody at the time the police entered the caravan then he could not have been involved?
mods were on a 1 way ticket to more pro/anti israel stuff, shut it down
Carp, redfin, camels, goats.
Yeah, we’ve had a good crack at absolutely fking it up beyond repair.
You forgot humans, especially cookers. They’re breeding like crazy
Such as MAGA or their mate Putin?
All I know is when they showed the suspects photos on the news.
Well look I try to not judge a book by its cover. But they really both looked like they were both a stubby short of a six pack.
For any Aussie movie fans. Like a Johnny Spiteri who’s perhaps been put up to do it.
I mean
Very smacky, or icy, or both, and possible mental disability. The external funding theory looks reasonable, but so does ‘they’re just a couple of sick carnts’ theory
They might be total racists but I don’t look at them and think these are the brains behind some big organised plot.
Could be unrelated racists maybe copycats I guess or if related likely being paid because they have debts.
That is you can tell why the NSW police don’t think they are the Mr Bigs of any organised terror plot.
There is little chance these two concocted the whole thing. I think @Tezza_the_King might be right that the press leak/publishing of the story could have compromised the investigation. The police may have been surveilling the caravan waiting to see who turned up as they investigated the whole thing. The story has now alerted those working with the two suspects. Anyway just a few thoughts. The police seemed very annoyed that the story had got out.
