U.S. Department of Agriculture: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service

 

Date of this Version

March 1999

Comments

SAVARIE, P. J. and R. L. BRUGGERS. 1999. Candidate repellents, oral and dermal toxicants, and fumigants for Brown Treesnake control. Pages 4 17-422 in Rodda, Gordon H., Sawai, Yoshio, Chiszar, David, and Tanaka, Hiroshi, editors. Problem snake management : the habu and the brown treesnake . Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. 534p. Permission to use.

Abstract

The information presented in this chapter was obtained primarily from two computerized literature searches conducted on the Dialog System (Dialog Information Services, Inc.; Palo Alto, Calif.), which covers a wide variety of topics including medicine, environmental sciences, agriculture, and biology. The key word in the first search was the scientific name of the Brown Treesnake, Boiga irregularis. The key words in the second search were repellent, fumigant, toxicant, or control (or any variations of these words) together with the word snake or snakes. In contrast to the research and development of vertebrate pest control agents for rodents and perhaps even birds, there has been no sustained systematic effort to develop chemical control agents for snakes. This is probably because snakes generally are not a chronic pest problem involving large numbers of animals. When control is needed, shooting, dubbing (Spackman, 1972; Roselle, 1978), or trapping (Thompson, 1975) of the individuals involved is usually all that is necessary to resolve the problem. The most sustained effort to develop chemicals to control snakes has been conducted by Japanese scientists attempting to control the Habu, Trimeresurus flavoviridis (Mishima et al., this volume, Chap. 1; Toriba et al., this volume, Chap. 33). This snake poses a human health hazard because hundreds of people are bitten yearly.

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