Maine biologist wins national prize for system that traps invasive snakes and lizards

MAINE PUBLIC • September 22, 2022

By day, Derek Yorks is a wildlife biologist for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, specializing in reptiles. But he and a friend have been working evenings and weekends to develop a system that uses artificial intelligence to identify and capture invasive snakes and lizards in a robotic trap. Yorks says the $100,000 award will allow the team to deploy better prototypes. This week, the device won a Theodore Roosevelt Genius Grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.