Burmese Pythons Become Permanent Residents Within The Everglades

By Domeni­ca Ghanem

Tens of thou­sands of Burmese pythons plague Ever­glades Nation­al Park and are believed to be the cause behind many of its van­ish­ing mam­mals. After years of try­ing to cap­ture and kill the pythons, the park now wants to con­tain and man­age them.

“We’ll nev­er erad­i­cate them,” said Bar­bara Hedges, inter­pre­tive vol­un­teer ranger at Ever­glades Nation­al Park. “It’s too late.”

In 12 years, the park has cap­tured or found dead only 1,950 pythons. The great­est num­ber in one year was 350 cap­tures in 2009. There were more already dead or slug­gish snakes dur­ing that year because the park expe­ri­enced three nights of below freez­ing tem­per­a­tures that winter.

But the park is not con­tent to leave the snakes run­ning ram­pant. Not while rab­bits and fox­es have com­plete­ly van­ished from the park and there has been an 87.5 per­cent decrease in bob­cats since 2000, accord­ing to Hedges.

“It’s not that we’ve giv­en up,” Lin­da Fri­ar, spokes­woman for Ever­glades Nation­al Park said. “We’ve changed strategies.”

Park researchers track the snakes by cap­tur­ing a female, insert­ing a chip into her and hav­ing her lead them to a group of male snakes. They call this a “Judas snake” accord­ing to Patrick Boyce, Big Cypress Nation­al Pre­serve park ranger.

The biggest chal­lenge python hunters face is detec­tion. Fri­ar said the snakes are very cryp­tic. They are not attract­ed to tra­di­tion­al trap­pings and they use oppor­tunis­tic hunt­ing techniques.

Researchers have tried new detec­tion approach­es such as try­ing to attract them with pheromones, or mat­ing scents. So far this tech­nique has not been ful­ly devel­oped or successful.

Fri­ar said they could be track­ing a snake that has a chip in it, detect it with­in a foot and a half of them, and still may not see it.

“They’re 12-foot snakes so it’s kind of scary,” Fri­ar said.

Hedges told a sto­ry about retired snake expert and wildlife biol­o­gist Skip Snow to illus­trate just how dif­fi­cult it is to see the pythons, even with track­ing devices.

“He had a radio anten­na and he says ‘I know it’s here, I know it’s here,’” Hedges said. “And then he stepped on it.”

Before his retire­ment, Snow was the on-site biol­o­gist most involved with Burmese pythons.  Snow still occa­sion­al­ly helps with efforts to cap­ture pythons in the park.

Fri­ar said she believes that the Park Ser­vice could do more research on detec­tion if it had more fund­ing, such as inves­ti­gat­ing part­ner­ships with local law enforce­ment canine units.

When the pythons are found, they are brought live in a pil­low­case to the park’s sci­ence cen­ter where they are euth­a­nized and used for research.

If the pythons are here to stay, why waste time, ener­gy and resources on killing as many as possible?

No pythons have ever been known to kill humans in Flori­da in the wild; there have only been record­ed inci­dences where pythons kill their pet own­ers. The odds of being killed by a snake are about 1 in 50 mil­lion, accord­ing to Hedges.

Boyce said there is a fine line between what is good for the wildlife and what is good for the peo­ple and there needs to be a balance.

“I don’t know if there are any sen­ti­men­tal peo­ple out there say­ing we should not kill them,” Boyce said. “They do not fit into the environment.”

Accord­ing to Fri­ar, the python has become detri­men­tal to resources: con­sum­ing prey that native ani­mals would con­sume and caus­ing reduc­tions in small mam­mals. This is why they are an inva­sive-exot­ic species, as opposed to sim­ply an exot­ic species, like the Nile croc­o­dile that was found in the late win­ter of this year, which hasn’t adapt­ed or reproduced.

The Burmese python has not only bred and spread, but has also adapt­ed. They have even been found in salt-water environments.

They are also clas­si­fied as inva­sive-exot­ic because there is noth­ing keep­ing their pop­u­la­tion under con­trol, Hedges said.

She explained how in Asia the Burmese python is cat­e­go­rized as “near­ly threat­ened” because it has human preda­tors that use its skin for leather and its body for food. Hedges said the alli­ga­tor is sup­posed to be the top preda­tor in the Ever­glades, but it is now com­pet­ing with the python.

Not all snakes are removed from the park. There are 21 species of snakes found in Ever­glades Nation­al Park, four of which are venomous.

“Oth­er snakes are good in the sense that they have an impor­tant role to play in the ecosys­tem,” Hedges said.

Flori­da law pro­hibits the release of pets into the wild. Ever­glades Nation­al Park hosts amnesty days, where peo­ple can bring their unwant­ed pets and zoos or oth­er peo­ple will take them. This, along with edu­cat­ing chil­dren on respon­si­ble pet own­er­ship, is one way the park is try­ing to man­age the python population.

“They’re gen­tle and beau­ti­ful and you can buy them for about $20 at a snake show when they’re just lit­tle hatch­lings,” Hedges said.

Leg­is­la­tion was passed in 2011 that banned the impor­ta­tion of Burmese pythons and a few oth­er snakes. Before this law, peo­ple could pur­chase a licens­ing fee for $100 a year.

Fri­ar said a con­cern big­ger than the python is what the next inva­sive species will be.  She said there have been reports of the African rock python, a non­ven­omous snake typ­i­cal­ly found in Africa, on the land adja­cent to Ever­glades Nation­al Park. It is sim­i­lar to the Burmese python in that it is one of the five largest snake species and can eat ani­mals the size of antelopes.

An inter­a­gency team is work­ing on erad­i­cat­ing them before they make their way into the park and become anoth­er name on Florida’s long list of invasive-exotics.