Biologists with the U.S. Geological Survey have started a yearlong project to track brown tree snakes near Guam Power Authority substations.
Christiana Quinata, who works with the USGS brown tree snake project, said the snakes will be captured, tagged and released, so researchers can study their movements near critical infrastructure.
Quinata spoke at a recent Mayors’ Council of Guam meeting to let the public know about nighttime searches in the villages.
“We're in the roads, and we're in the various communities near substations, and we're looking for snakes, and so the goal of that is to really understand the snake population that's around those substations, where they're coming from,” Quinata said. “Is it coming from urban areas or more jungle areas into the substation? And that'll help inform what's our next move to help GPA mitigate snake-caused outages.”
She said the searchers will work on weekday evenings, using high-powered headlamps to scan vegetation.
Search areas will be marked with flagging tape, and residents are asked not to disturb the markers.
“We're only staying within the right of ways,” Quinata said. “So we're not trying to go into people's yards or other private property. We're really just staying along the roadways or GPA property.”
GPA said snakes caused 86 power outages last year, primarily in central and southern Guam.
GPA also works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service - Wildlife Services to remove snakes from substations and transmission lines. In fiscal 2024, the federal agency captured a total of 869 brown tree snakes by substations through trapping and hand captures, according to GPA.
