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Mice join fight against invasive snakes on Guam


ErnstBlofeld

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ErnstBlofeld
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Stars and Stripes/Travis Tritten:

The dead mice were laced with a common pain reliever — about one quarter of a child’s dose of acetaminophen each — and dropped Wednesday from a helicopter into the jungle canopy around Naval Base Guam.

The airdrop was a test of the newest weapon against one of the island’s most stubborn enemies — the invasive brown tree snake.

If the test goes well, the laced mice could prove to be one of the few effective ways to kill an unwanted and elusive predator that has laid waste to Guam’s ecology over the past three decades.

“The discovery that snakes will die when they eat acetaminophen was a huge step forward,” Anne Brooke, conservation resources program manager for Naval Facilities Command Marianas, said Thursday. “The problem was how you get the snakes to eat it.”

The brown tree snake was introduced onto Guam — which has no native snakes — by military transports following World War II. By the 1980s, the species had “eaten its way from one end of island to the other,” eliminating most indigenous birds, causing the extinction of some species unique to Guam, Brooke said.

Many still fear the snake could accidentally migrate again and cause environmental devastation on other Pacific islands such as Hawaii, she said.

Snake traps are set around military and civilian airports, and dogs are used to sniff outbound shipments of furniture and other cargo. But it has done little to reduce the problem.

Ten years ago, an offensive was opened against the snakes.
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