Potentially invasive tokay gecko caught

The brown tree snake is not the only potentially invasive species that the Division of Fish and Wildlife is on the lookout for, as they have found black widow spiders, tokay geckos, and scorpions during inspections at the islands’ ports, according to Department of Public Lands and Natural Resources acting secretary Manny Pangelinan.

He said they recently caught one tokay gecko during a routine inspection of a Tinian vessel. It measured around 6 inches and was euthanized.

“We found [a tokay gecko] on our search of a Tinian vessel. That was about three weeks ago,” Pangelinan said, noting that the gecko is the second largest in the world and can grow up to 13 inches.

According to a tokay gecko fact sheet found online, the geckos are a potentially harmful species when introduced to an ecosystem as they can also devour birds, small mammals, frogs, other reptiles, and insects like cockroaches.

The information, gathered from tokaygeckos.org, said the geckos are commonly found in Southeast Asian countries.

Pangelinan said the ship originally came from Japan and was in Guam before docking on Tinian.

“Every time a ship is parked [in] Guam and they load cargo, we will consider that a contaminated ship,” he said, noting that Guam cargo is considered “high value” and that all cargo from Guam—whether from military, commercial vessels or aircraft—are inspected.

He emphasized that the tokay gecko was found on the vessel and not outside, on land or at the port.

“It is not to say we are not concerned. We are concerned. But it just goes to show that we have to be vigilant in how we do our inspection,” he said.

Pangelinan said the gecko could cause an “imbalance” as a new predator within the ecosystem, as it consumes more and grows larger than other geckos.

“It can do one of two things: it can thrive or it can die because it’s not adaptive, but if one adapts and thrives, it can probably dominate,” he said.

Unlike the current response effort to the brown tree snake found on Rota, the most the CNMI government can do is to hope they contain other invasive threats at the port.

“In the case of [the brown tree snake], we have the capacity…to increase the effort of surveillance, trapping, and monitoring, but in the case of the [tokay gecko] we don’t have the funding resources or capability,” he said.

He pointed to the lack of knowledge or personnel to set up traps for geckos and emphasized the importance of educating people about not bringing foreign plants or animals to the CNMI.

“Realistically all we can do right now is to continue to conduct inspections and monitor for any introductions for invasive species or any invasive species that are hitchhiking in a luggage, in a container, [or] in boxes,” he said.

He called on the community to cooperate and assist when quarantine or invasive species teams are doing inspections.