The brown treesnake: an invasive pest

By Qamar Schuyler
Special to the Saipan Tribune

Last week we highlighted the efforts of the interagency marine monitoring team. This week, we’ll move back on land and follow the snake guys as they try to keep our island safe from the harmful impacts of the invasive Brown Treesnake

The snake team, led by Nate Hawley at the Division of Fish and Wildlife, consists of a core group of eight highly trained snake handlers. They have all gone through intensive training in Guam, where they learned valuable skills such as snake identification, capturing or subduing snakes, and how to deal with poisonous snakes. Although the brown treesnake is only mildly venomous, the risk of more poisonous species coming into the CNMI with shipments from the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries is fairly high. One Micronesian snake team recently found a banded krait, a snake common to Southeast Asia that is estimated to be about 16 times more venomous than the cobra!

The program also has a crack team of dog handlers: five on Saipan and one on Tinian. Each handler has a particular dog that they work with exclusively. The dogs, including four Jack Russell terriers, a Labrador retriever, and a German Shepherd, can find the snakes by their distinctive scent. The dogs are most useful in open fields, or in areas full of debris or piles of junk. It would take human searchers hours to comb through these places, but the dogs are much more efficient.

Marja Onni, a professional trainer who has worked extensively with customs and secret service dogs, is currently training the dogs to work in forested areas, and is also teaching a few of the dogs to be able to find illegally harvested coconut crabs and fruit bats. How’s that for cross-training!

As you probably already know from the temporary tattoos, the radio jingle, the bumper stickers, the T-shirts, and the public presentations, whenever you see a snake, you should call the 24-hour hotline at 28-SNAKE. A few sharp-eyed residents recently did just that. On September 22 there was a sighting in Fina Sisu, and another snake was spotted in Kagman less than a week later, on Sept. 28.

When the call comes in, whether it’s 10am or 10pm, the snake team springs into action. If you don’t include two Tinian sightings where the response time was abnormally high, it takes the team an average of 10 minutes to reach the scene of the crime. In the best case scenario, the person that sighted the snake has kept an eye on the animal and the snake team can use special equipment to subdue and capture the snake. However, if the team doesn’t immediately find the snake, they will set traps and continue to search the area for at least two weeks. Since the snakes are nocturnal, teams search in the early mornings and in the evenings from 7-11pm.

When there has been a sighting, the tireless team members work, on average, 3-4 nights on and only 1-2 nights off. During the day, they continue to monitor traps and maintain the search areas, keeping them clear of vines and dense vegetation. By about a week into the search, the team is no longer looking for the snake that was initially sighted, but is now looking for evidence of resident populations. Chances are if you’ve seen one snake, there are probably a bunch more hiding out that you haven’t seen.

When they’re not responding to snake sightings, the snake team still has plenty of work to do. The dog handlers inspect every single vessel or plane from Guam, as well as all of its cargo. In addition, the snake team must maintain and monitor all of the traps that are set around the airport—about 200 traps on Saipan alone! The traps contain live mice as bait, so the mice must be fed and watered 2-3 times a week. The traps also sustain a lot of damage from rats, and must constantly be replaced and repaired. Besides inspecting ports and taking care of traps, the team also gives presentations at various public events and in school classrooms to educate the community. On Tinian and Rota, all of these functions are carried out by a single employee!

We are lucky here in the CNMI. We’ve only had about 100 sightings in the past 20 years. In contrast, it is estimated that there are anywhere from 1-12 million snakes living on Guam. Our children, birds, and power lines are a lot safer due in part to the vigilance of the snake team, and to the residents who use the 28-SNAKE hotline.

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REMINDER

Saturday is the Wing Beach tree planting event, volunteers still needed! Call Kathy Yuknavage at 664-8311.

Sunday is the Youth Alliance Adopt-a-Coral event. Call Joe Paran at 234-6284.