Brown tree snakes effectively removed from a large plot of land on Guam by perimeter trapping

Abstract

The brown tree snake introduction to Guam has had serious environmental, economic and social consequences. Trapping brown tree snakes in the vicinities of ports and other cargo staging facilities is central to a program implemented to deter its dispersal from Guam. Trapping forested plots on their perimeters has been an efficient and effective trap placement strategy for removing brown tree snakes from plots up to 8.4 ha. Here we examined whether this trap placement strategy was effective on a 17.8 ha plot, over twice the size of plot for which there was solid evidence of perimeter trapping’s efficacy. We found that brown tree snakes were removed according to an exponential decay function. From 7 weeks on of trapping, snake captures had declined to low steady state levels that may best reflect population recruitment in the plot. After 22 weeks of trapping, both the plot interior and perimeter were trapped in a second phase designed to determine if the central portion of the plot contained reservoirs of brown tree snake populations. The second trapping phase lasted for 8 weeks and produced the same low, steady state capture rates as the final 16 weeks of the first phase that used only perimeter trapping. Only five snakes were captured in the plot interior in the second phase. We concluded that perimeter trapping removed brown tree snakes throughout the plot and the strategy could be applied to larger plots than demonstrated previously.