http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/03/248386912/dead-mice-update-tiny-assassins-dropped-on-guam-againDead Mice Update: Tiny Assassins Dropped On Guam Again
by Mark Memmott
December 03, 2013 1:40 PM
Dead mice laced with acetaminophen have for the fourth time been dropped from helicopters into trees on Guam in an experiment aimed at killing snakes that have devastated the island's bird population and caused other damage.
No, we haven't been duped by something written by The Onion.
As we reported last February, scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service have been experimenting in the jungles around Anderson Air Force Base. They want to see if some of the estimated 2 million brown tree snakes on the island can be eradicated by enticing them to eat mice containing relatively small amounts of the painkiller.
It seems that acetaminophen is toxic to the snakes.
The trick has been getting the poisoned bait to the snakes, which hang out in trees, and keeping it away from other animals (though researchers say the 80 milligrams of acetaminophen in each mouse shouldn't harm most other creatures). The potential solution: attach the rodents to streamers that act as weak parachutes, then drop them from helicopters into the trees. The streamers get snagged in branches. For the snakes, it's manna (or mice?) from heaven.
This Monday, Guam's Pacific Daily News writes, "representatives from several federal agencies watched... as a crew dropped dead mice filled with mild toxins onto two test sites on Andersen Air force Base, for the fourth official aerial bait drop event." The Department of Interior and Department of Defense have joined in the $8 million project.
This week's test included a high-tech component:
"Crews ... combed the two 136-acre areas — equaling the size of about 210 football fields combined — to locate tiny radios also implanted in some of the mice," the Pacific Daily News says. "These radios help the USDA track the snakes' activity — whether or not they've eaten the mice or if the mice decompose on their own."
On a video posted by the Pacific Daily News, Agriculture Department biologist Dan Vice says the drops were designed to "further the technology" and help determine if mouse bombs are indeed effective snake killers. There's some footage of the aerial drops in that video.
VID AT LINK
There's more about all this in our previous post, including some background:
As NPR's Christopher Joyce has reported, "the brown tree snake invaded Guam over 60 years ago — they sneaked in aboard boats or in the wheel wells of airplanes." It's feared that they might show up elsewhere, such as Hawaii, if they hop rides on planes and ships leaving Guam. The Agriculture Department has estimated that if the snakes reached the Aloha State, the economic damage "from medical incidents [bites], power outages [they get caught in power lines and transmitters], and decreases in tourism ... would range from approximately $593 million to $2.14 billion annually."
The snakes' presence in Guam has been good for at least some creatures. Chris reported that because the snakes have eaten most of the island's birds, the spider population has exploded.
Also, there's this from a 2011 report posted on Andersen Air Base's website:
" 'As you may or may not know, the brown tree snake is responsible for the extinction of nine of 12 forest birds on Guam,' explained [Marc Hall, the supervisory wildlife biologist of USDA on Andersen]. 'Research is showing that the loss of the birds may be impacting the ability of the natural ecosystem to sustain itself.'
"Before the snakes arrived, Guam's ecosystem was very different. Numerous birds could be seen and heard when walking through the northern limestone forests. Without the birds to disperse seeds and the fact that nonnative pigs and deer tear up the ground and eat sapling plants, the native limestone forest has been severely degraded and will require extensive help in order to recover."
And we've previously covered the issue of "live vs. dead bait":
This research paper posted online by the Agriculture Department indicates that in earlier tests, the snakes did devour "dead neonatal mice adulterated with 80-mg acetaminophen" and that the "baiting" with laced mice was effective in killing the snakes.
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Guam (i/??w??m/; Chamorro: Guåhån) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government.[4][5] Guam is listed as one of seventeen Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United Nations.[6] The island's capital is Hagåtña (formerly named Agana). Guam is the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands.
The Chamorros, Guam's indigenous people, first populated the island approximately 4,000 years ago. The island has a long history of European colonialism, beginning with Ferdinand Magellan's Spanish expedition landing on March 6, 1521. The first colony was established in 1668 by Spain with the arrival of settlers including Padre San Vitores, a Catholic missionary. For more than two centuries Guam was an important stopover for the Spanish Manila Galleons that crossed the Pacific annually. The island was controlled by Spain until 1898, when it was surrendered to the United States during the Spanish–American War and later formally ceded as part of the Treaty of Paris.
As the largest island in Micronesia and the only U.S.-held island in the region before World War II, Guam was captured by the Japanese on December 8, 1941, just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was occupied for two and a half years. During the occupation, the people of Guam were subjected to acts that included torture, beheadings, and rape,[7][8] and were forced to adopt the Japanese culture.[9] Guam was subject to fierce fighting when U.S. troops recaptured the island on July 21, 1944, a date commemorated every year as Liberation Day.[10]
Today, Guam's economy is supported by its principal industry, tourism, which is composed primarily of visitors from Japan. Guam's second largest source of income is the United States military.[11]
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http://www.militarytimes.com/article/20131202/NEWS08/312020022/Guam-tests-toxic-mice-kill-invasive-snakes-Andersenhttp://www.kuam.com/story/24117947/2013/12/02/military-exercise-on-guam-and-tinian-this-week