Making efforts to restore natural order among indigenous species found on Guam. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, and the Government of Guam have launched a program to help eradicate or control Guam's brown tree snake problem.
For the last decade, USDA has been working on ways to best resolve the island's brown tree snake concern. Wildlife services assistant state director for Guam, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands Dan Vice says the initial project was to find intoxicant's for brown tree snakes. After screening dozens of chemicals, the USDA came up with acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. But he admitted, "The challenge is getting snakes to eat the intoxicant."
This is where the federal government's new program comes into play: the poison or intoxicant is delivered to snakes via a dead mouse. From there they are dropped out of the sky and into the forest environment. Vice says the problem they were experiencing until their newfound method was the mice would fall on to the ground of the forest or jungle and not stay in the canopy, where the snakes could get to them. "We've come up with a device that you can put on an aircraft, have it hang up in the forest canopy, and it's essentially available to snakes," he explained.
A total of 1,100 mice were dropped into Guam's dense jungles. Vice says out of the 1,100 acetaminophen-stuffed mice deployed around the island, they expect less than 15% to be ineffective, or drop to the canopy floor. "Of those 85% or so that hang up in the forest canopy, it's probably reasonable to expect that 50-60% or more will be taken by a snake," he said.
Vice also said that even with that level of success, the USDA knows they are unable to get to every snake. He says this only another step in larger scale to control Guam's brown tree snake problem, telling KUAM News, "It's not the tool that's going to eradicate them from Guam, it's a tool that might help us do more to benefit Guam for conservation, for reintroducing native wildlife, for protecting port resources."
And for those who might be worried about the next wild pig you might catch during hunting season, Vice says the acetaminophen stuffed mice won't harm other wildlife.
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