Robots help biologists in saving native species

A robot zaps and vacuums up venomous lion-fish in Bermuda. A helicopter pelts Guam's trees with poison-baited dead mice to fight the voracious brown tree snake. A special boat with giant winglike nets stuns and catches Asian carp in the US Midwest.

In the fight against alien animals that invade and overrun native species, the weird and wired wins. "Critters are smart they survive," said biologist Rob 'Goose' Gosnell, head of US department of agriculture's wildlife services in Guam, where brown tree snakes have gobbled up nearly all the native birds."Trying to outsmart them is hard to do."

Invasive species are plants and animals that thrive in areas where they don't naturally live, usually brought there by humans, either accidentally or intentionally.

Sometimes, with no natural predators, they multiply and take over, crowding out and at times killing native species. Now, new techno logy is being combined with the old met hods weed pulling, trapping and pesticides. Finding new weapons is crucial because invasive species are costly $314 billion per year in damages in just the US, UK, Australia, South Africa, India and Brazil.

Case in point: There are companies that now market traps for wild pigs that are triggered by cellphones.

A new underwater robot is targeting the stunning but dangerous lionfish. With no natural predator in the Atlantic, the voracious aquarium fish devour large amounts of other fish, including key commercial fish species such as snapper and grouper.