The brown tree snake caught on Rota on Sep. 3 has been shipped to Guam for necropsy, with no results reported yet as of yesterday, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife\u2019s Manny Igisomar, coordinator and biologist of the CNMI Brown Treesnake Program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe snake was shipped to Guam\u2026so biologists [at the U.S. Geological Survey] could figure out what the stomach contents are. Maybe to give us a better idea of how old the snake is and what it has been eating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
This information could give insight into how long the snake has been on Rota, as according to him, it can be determined whether the snake \u201chas been eating stuff from Rota versus a starving snake that may have just gotten off the boat.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, yesterday concluded the deployment of the additional 200 traps sent to Rota in the efforts to gauge whether the BTS was a lone snake or from a population on island, according to Igisomar.<\/p>\n
There are now 40 traps set at Rota\u2019s airport and 206 at its seaport and surrounding areas, according Igisomar.<\/p>\n
He said the setup phase of operations concluded with yesterday\u2019s deployment of all 40 traps.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Manny Pangelinan, acting secretary of the Department of Lands and Natural Resources, he said traps were \u201cstrategically set\u201d on recommendation from U.S. Fish and Wildlife.<\/p>\n
He said that monitoring, trapping, and surveillance to ensure the brown tree snake was the lone one on Rota involved the joint efforts of USGS, USFW, the CNMI\u2019s Division of Fish and Wildlife, as well as Rota\u2019s Mayor Office and their DLNR office.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur target is to determine with high certainty that there is no other BTS there. If it takes us three months, we will continue to do three months of monitoring, trapping, and surveillance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said there is \u201calways a chance\u201d that operation may be expanded; however he noted focus has been on setting up traps.<\/p>\n
The snake was discovered on Sept. 3 by DFW\u2019s BTS K-9 handler Shewln Cabrera with the help of Robert Ulloa of CNMI-DLNR, according to Adam Knox, USGS\u2019 Rapid Response Team coordinator.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe snake was found at the Rota Seaport, suggesting that it may have come in on a private or commercial seagoing vessel, but we are looking into all potential modes of incursion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said that night searches with high-powered lamps are being done from 6pm to 10pm by rapid response searchers and biologists.<\/p>\n
He described brown tree snakes as \u201ccryptic,\u201d nocturnal, and difficult to see, which adds to the challenge of finding them, but noted that the trapping and search methods being deployed have been developed over years of research and use in Guam.<\/p>\n
Over time probability estimates will be prepared on whether there is a snake on Rota, according Knox.<\/p>\n
\u201cA large response to the Rota snake is warranted to help prevent the establishment of snakes and the repeat of the ecological disaster [in] Guam,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The brown tree snake caught on Rota on Sep. 3 has been shipped to Guam…<\/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":[1201,346,51,857],"class_list":["post-179600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-bts","tag-dlnr","tag-guam","tag-usgs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179600","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=179600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}