In the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, the Australian government listed the impacts of the cane toad as a "key threatening process". Cane toads have been very successful as an invasive species, having become established in more than 15 countries within the past 150 years. The recent, sudden inundation of foreign species has led to severe breakdowns in Australian ecology, after overwhelming proliferation of a number of introduced species, for which the continent has no efficient natural predators or parasites, and which displace native species in some cases, these species are physically destructive to habitat, as well. Australia's relative isolation prior to European colonisation and the industrial revolution, both of which dramatically increased traffic and import of novel species, allowed development of a complex, interdepending system of ecology, but one which provided no natural predators for many of the species subsequently introduced. The cane toad in Australia is regarded as an exemplary case of an invasive species.
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