BIG CYPRESS NATIONAL PRESERVE, Fla. — An armed mob has set out into the Florida Everglades to flush out a scaly invader.
It sounds like the second act of a sci-fi horror flick; instead it is Florida’s plan for dealing with an infestation of Burmese pythons that are eating their way through a fragile ecosystem....
‘‘We feel like anybody can get out in the Everglades and figure out how to try and find these things,’’ said Nick Wiley, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission....
The state is offering cash prizes to whoever brings in the longest python and whoever bags the most pythons by the time the competition ends at midnight Feb. 10.
Dozens of would-be python hunters showed up for some last-minute training in snake handling Saturday morning at the University of Florida Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center in Davie.
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"Fla. pythons elude seasoned hunters; Fla. pythons elude seasoned hunters" by Jennifer Kay | Associated Press, January 19, 2013
IN THE FLORIDA EVERGLADES — The man known as ‘‘Alligator Ron’’ has a lifetime of experience in the Florida Everglades, a fleet of airboats at his disposal, and knows the habitats of furry prey for large reptiles. He still couldn’t lead a pack of hunters to a single Burmese python.
That’s the catch in Florida’s Python Challenge: Even experienced hunters with special permits to regularly stalk the exotic snake through Florida’s swamp lands are having trouble finding them for a state-sponsored competition.
They can hardly be seen in the water or on land because they blend in so well with their terrain, said state wildlife commissioner Ron Bergeron, whose nickname is emblazoned on the rudder of his black airboat, over the image of him riding an alligator.
The vast majority of roughly 1,000 people who signed up to hunt Burmese pythons on public lands from Jan. 12 through Feb. 10 are amateurs when it comes to pythons. Only about 30 hold permits for harvesting pythons throughout the year.
The permit holders might have a slight edge when it comes to handling snakes, but the tan, splotchy pythons have natural camouflage that gives them an important advantage in the ecosystem they have invaded. As of Thursday, 21 pythons had been killed for the contest, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
It’s hard to pin down exactly how many Burmese pythons slither through Florida’s Everglades, but officials say their effect is glaringly obvious. According to a study released last year, sightings of raccoons, opossums, bobcats, rabbits, and other mammals in the Everglades are down as much as 99 percent in areas where pythons are known to live.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Snaking Through the Florida Everglades
It is believed that the pythons are devouring the native wildlife and officials worry the snakes’ voracious appetite will undermine the ongoing, multimillion-dollar effort to restore natural water flow through the Everglades.
Bergeron led US Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, into the Everglades to hunt pythons Thursday afternoon. They splashed from their airboat through knee-deep water into several islands that rise in small bumps above the sawgrass, but they always emerged empty-handed.
They didn’t flush out any of the mammals Bergeron thought he would see, either. The only thing they found: signs of feral hogs, another problematic invasive species.
‘‘Rabbits were like rats. Growing up, you saw them everywhere,’’ said Jim Howard, a Miami native and a python permit holder participating in the contest. ‘‘I haven’t seen a rabbit in 20 years. I don’t see foxes. I hardly see anything.’’
He has caught a python in the Everglades in each of the last two years, though. Each was more than 12 feet long and contained more than 50 eggs.
He returned to those locations Wednesday, poking under ferns and discarded wooden boards with a hook at the end of a 3-foot-long stick. All he found were the sheddings of some large snake — each transparent scale was the size of a fingertip.
After spending hours steering his boat along 14 miles of canals to levees and embankments where pythons might lurk, Howard extended the hook toward the dense, impenetrable grass that stretched all the way to the horizon, with no landmarks or vantage points.
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Related:
"Pet python escapes, kills girl in Fla." by Associated Press | July 2, 2009
OXFORD, Fla. - An 8-foot pet Burmese python broke out of an aquarium and strangled a 2-year-old girl in her bedroom yesterday at a central Florida home, authorities said....
Maybe pythons as pets isn't that good an idea.
The Humane Society of the United States said including yesterday’s death, at least 12 people have been killed in the United States by pet pythons since 1980, including five children. Some owners have freed pythons into the wild and a population of them has taken hold in the Everglades. One killed an alligator and then burst when it tried to eat it.
Moral of the story: Don't bite off more than you can chew.
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Also see: Around AmeriKa: Taking a Walk in Florida
Just be careful.
