Storm widens door Hawaii wildlife and agriculture officials are worried that Supertyphoon Pongsona's devastation of Guam has increased the risk of the dreaded brown tree snake slithering into Hawaii or other snake-free Pacific Islands.
for tree snakes
Typhoon devastation on
Guam hampers the effort to
screen cargo headed for HawaiiBy Diana Leone
dleone@starbulletin.comMany of the fences to keep snakes out of Guam's airport and traps to catch them were destroyed by the weekend storm, which packed winds of up to 180 mph, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services on Guam.
The agency's workers normally search all cargo leaving Guam for traces of the snake, but for the foreseeable future, they will be more focused on rebuilding their homes, and getting power, water and other basic necessities. Dan Vice with Wildlife Services on Guam told a Hawaii-based USDA employee that six of his staff lost their homes while many other workers' homes sustained water damage.
Guam normally employs 41 full-time employees, including 13 canine teams, that inspect outgoing cargo, said Christy Martin, public information officer for the Hawaii Coordinating Group on Alien Pest Species. Last year those workers found 13,000 brown tree snakes, Martin said.
Even so, four snakes were detected in cargo in Hawaii.
"These things will crawl into anything, even wheel wells of an airplane," Martin said.
As U.S. relief efforts begin to flow to Guam, largely through military aircraft, Hawaii officials caution that they must increase vigilance to keep the brown tree snake from spreading here.
"I think there's a definite threat increase to Hawaii, because of the conditions on Guam," said Randy Bartlett, chairman of the Maui Invasive Species Committee.
An emergency meeting today among representatives of the state departments of Agriculture, Land and Natural Resources, and Transportation, and the federal USDA and Fish & Wildlife Service was scheduled "to strategize what's the next step when flights resume from Guam," said Domingo Cravalho, a state Agriculture Department quarantine inspector.
Introduced on Guam in the 1950s, the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) has nearly destroyed the island's native bird population. The native of Indonesia and New Guinea also has bitten at least 40 infants, caused thousands of power outages and harmed agriculture crops in Guam, earning it placement on The Nature Conservancy's "Ten Most Unwanted List" of invasive species.
Until Guam is able to return to full screening for the snakes, Hawaii must increase screening of any planes or boats coming from there, Cravalho said.
The greatest risk, Martin said, will be when emergency equipment shipped from Hawaii to Guam, such as telephone repair equipment, power generators, etc., begins to return to the state. "Everything used there has to be checked," she said.
State and federal agencies are seeking emergency appropriations to keep the brown tree snake out of Hawaii. The state has no native snakes.
U.S. Department of Agriculture