"If the current experiment works – scientists will know because they’re also packing the dead mice with radio transmitters for the snakes to ingest
..." --
CNN
The tracking radios is an interesting note: Afterall, a mouse-kabob not dangling in a tree could be food for other predators as well and ingested by unintended (nontarget) animals such as dogs, cats, pigs, or monitor lizards. It would be good to track the corpsicle to make sure it is consumed by the target brown tree snakes, and not some other arboreal carrion feeder.
On the other hand, if tracking radio, then why not go whole hog and provide tracking video? Pin hole videocams are a small additional payload and this might make it quicker to verify that the bait is finding its intended target.
Now some bright spark out there is going to catch on really quick: There was a recent TEDtalk where Nathan Myhrvold seriously proposed developing a laser mosquito zapper to prevent diseases carried by mosqueto bites. See:
"TED 2010: Death Star Laser Gun Zaps Mosquitoes Dead"
If the key to this whole exercise is to dangle food in trees to find brown tree snakes in trees, then perhaps what is required is a tree monitoring system that detects snake motion in trees and lasers them out of the canopy. The image recognition problem is even simpler with power lines and utility poles, especially since a brown tree snake has a specific IR signature when it is in a tree.
This has to be far easier than shooting down mosquitos, and the image processing requirement is less real-time intensive. Further, combat CO2 laser optics has certainly reached the pinnacle of point-and-shoot, so with an overhead laser platform, an entire forest could be quickly pruned of brown tree snakes -- even if the current population density exceeds 13,000 brown tree snakes per square mile.
It is known that Guamians have developed recipes for roasted brown tree snake meat - so a high-powered laser application could also satisfy human market demands for prepared snake meat.
Re-outfitting a small fleet of Predator UAV drones should allow deployment of a laser-based brown tree snake eradication program within the year while effectively addressing budget constraints of the ongoing brown tree snake control program. Manpower would not require additional UAV pilots stationed on Guam, but could be sourced from mainland US UAV piloting centers and trainees who need to log effective flight time experience before engaging in actual combat missions.
With many available targets automatically selected for pilots to consider, a pilot's principal role will be to prevent mis-identified kills. With a maximum length of 3 meters, pilots will need to make sure that someone's pet python is not accidentally mistaken for a brown tree snake.
