Snake Invasion

Some 30 years ago, a plague hit the Micronesian island of Guam and wiped out most of its species of forest birds. The plague was not a virus or a pesticide but a snake—the brown tree snake. Possibly imported from New Guinea to the island by U.S. military traffic, the snake multiplied prodigiously on Guam.

There are now as many as 30,000 of the slightly venomous reptiles per square mile [12,000 per sq km] in some areas. They reportedly festoon fences and electrical wires, invade homes, pop unexpectedly out of drainpipes, and attack pets and even babies.

Now environmentalists in Hawaii are concerned that the snakes will make a similar onslaught there. Hawaii has no native snakes, but it does have many species of exotic and rare birds that would be quite vulnerable to such predators.

So far, several brown tree snakes have been found at Hawaii’s airports apparently stowaways on airplanes arriving from Guam.