Hawaii using drone warfare on invasive frogs

Back in the 1980s, a bunch of coqui frogs from Puerto Rico hitched a ride on some nursery plants and took a trip to the island of O'ahu in Hawai'i. The problems was…they stayed there. And they had no natural predators. So they just kept multiplying, and multiplying, pissing off their human neighbors with growing choruses of shrill, lawn-mower like croaking.

This, as far as I can tell, is the crux of the issue: there's a lot of them, and they're loud as fuck, and it's annoying.

So, how do you solve a problem like a loud invasive amphibian? Chemical warfare, delivered by drones, of course!

According to Hawai'i's Department of Land and Natural Resources, many of the frogs have gotten comfortable in the higher elevations of the Kuliʻouʻou Forest Reserve, where the sloped terrain makes it particularly difficult for humans to do any actual frog-clearing work. So drones it is!

The drones will be spraying a solution of citric acid, which can kill the frogs and their tadpoles on contact. (Apparently they can absorb it through their porous skin?) The good news is, citric acid is non-toxic to humans, and should do minimal damage to the rest of the vegetation in the area.

I suppose "chemical warfare by drone" was the inevitable next step in the evolution of Frogger.

Previously:
See the freaky and cool way that a black-eyed tree frog's eyes wake up from a nap