As of yesterday, there has not been anything conclusive yet whether the brown tree snake captured on Sept. 3 on Rota was a stowaway or from a population of snakes on Rota, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife\u2019s Sylvan Igisomar, coordinator and biologist for the CNMI BTS program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not gotten enough data to be conclusive. Right now we are still deploying traps and we are still searching nightly,\u201d Igisomar said.<\/p>\n
According to him, night searches have gone from 7pm to 11pm since operations began, covering a majority of Rota\u2019s Songsong area, with traps monitored during daytime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are saturating [the area], moving northward strategically, placing those traps in forested areas, residential areas as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said if the weather had permitted yesterday, 246 traps total would already be deployed on the island.<\/p>\n
Initially, according to Igisomar, there were 46 traps on Rota, with an additional 200 provided by the U.S. Geological Survey in Guam.<\/p>\n
A hundred of the additional traps were deployed last Friday, he said.<\/p>\n
The CNMI BTS program has a total of nine personnel with Igisomar as its coordinator.<\/p>\n
Staff has been rotating on and off island, with the USGS team doing the same, according to him.<\/p>\n
They are four USGS biologists on Rota, with five from the CNMI Division of Fish and Wildlife.<\/p>\n
Igisomar called the first few weeks of operations the most intensive, as the setup phase of operations includes the four-hour mandatory night searches, along with trap monitoring, agency and manpower coordinating, report and press release writing as some of their efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cFolks are working around the clock up there. We\u2019re trying to juggle those things\u2026to find a balance so folks are getting enough rest,\u201d Igisomar said, who personally has been working 12- to 14-hour days.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully by mid this week all the traps will be set up,\u201d he said noting that setup is where most of the manpower effort is.<\/p>\n
He said the community response to their efforts on Rota has been \u201cvery good.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re concerned about their environment. We\u2019ve been getting permission to setup traps and do searches around people\u2019s backyards,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
If a snake is found, he said it should be killed immediately; if not, people can notify the 28-SNAKE hotline as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
He said \u201ctime is critical\u201d in stifling a potential BTS problem on the islands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe brown tree snake is a very elusive animal and as we can see from what it\u2019s done to Guam, it\u2019s very destructive, so we ask the public, if you see one, kill it\u2026try to separate the head from the body to make sure that it is dead, [or] crush its head. Because once it gets away, it\u2019s very difficult to find,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As of yesterday, there has not been anything conclusive yet whether the brown tree snake…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[54,51,67,857],"class_list":["post-179363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-agency","tag-guam","tag-people","tag-usgs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}