THE NEW YORK TIMES LIFE/STYLE All efforts to spread Burmese pythons in the Everglades, in Floridamoving north, reaching West Palm Beach and Fort Myers, the boa constrictors are threatening everincreasing swaths of the ecosystem.
That was one of the few definitive conclusions in a comprehensive scientific study of pythons published by last month US Geological Surveywhich highlighted the difficulty in containing boa constrictors since they were first documented as an established population in the state in 2000.
Little is known about how long Burmese pythons have lived in the wild in Florida, how often they have bred, and most importantly, how much the state’s python population has grown, according to the study, which describes the python problem as “one of the most complicated.” “identified problems of management of invasive species worldwide”.
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It is also not known exactly how they travel. The study theorized that South Florida’s extensive network of canals and levees “might facilitate longdistance movement of pythons,” although it indicated that gliding and swimming to northern locations might take a while.
“A python traveled continuously for 58.5 hours and covered 2.43 kilometers in a single day,” according to the study of a radiotracked snake.
More research needs to be done to develop and evaluate new tools to eradicate pythons and improve existing ones, the study concluded, adding that controlling the species’ spread is vital to protecting the Everglades. Previous studies have found that Burmese pythons, which are nonnative predators from South Asia, have decimated native species such as shorebirds, swamp rabbits and whitetailed deer.
The pythons found in Florida were more than 15 feet long and weighed more than 200 pounds, according to the study; Even juveniles can grow to be over 0.5 m long.
The voracious spread of pythons is even more alarming given the billions of dollars that state and federal governments have spent restoring the Everglades, the study noted, calling invasive species “one of the biggest threats to the success of the restoration.”
Florida, with its subtropical climate, numerous ports of entry, and brisk live animal trade, has at least 139 established invasive species, which means they breed in the wild, according to the State Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Over time, over 500 nonnative species have been reported in the state.
Pythons, like invasive iguanas, have been known to occasionally emerge from toilet bowls in South Florida; The study notes that while Burmese pythons have been sighted primarily in and around the Everglades National Park and other swamps, many have also been found in Naples and the western environs Miami.
Once a year, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission hosts a public python hunt where people are challenged to find and remove as many snakes as possible. Participants must complete an online or inperson training course on humanely killing pythons using appropriate mechanical methods such as a stun gun or manuals such as hunting knives, as hunting does not permit the use of firearms. Last year’s winner took home $10,000 for hunting 28 pythons.
Dustin Crum, who has been hunting pythons for a decade, took home $1,500 for catching the competitor’s largest snake at 10 feet. He won in the same category in 2021 after catching one at 4.5m.
“We started it as a hobby and just couldn’t believe we could catch boa constrictors like this in the wild,” said Crum, 42, who now hunts pythons fulltime. The state pays hunters $50 per foot for the first 4 feet of snake and $25 for each additional foot, he said, plus an hourly rate. Outside of the governmentsponsored public competition, Crum uses guns to kill the snakes. “I’ll say a little prayer, ‘Hey, it’s not your fault,'” he said.
Sometimes scientists ask to bring live pythons so they can be tracked. Hunters like Crum put them in suitable dropboxes on night hunts and email researchers to pick them up in the morning.
Pythons became popular exotic pets in the United States in the 1970s. Some eventually grew so large that their owners released them into the wild. In 2000, scientists documented several generations of pythons living in a relatively large geographic area in the Everglades and southern tip of Florida.
The realization that pythons reproduce extraordinarily well, nearly wiping out native species, helped enact regulations restricting python importation and ownership. But it was too late to stop its spread.
Spotting pythons, which like to hide in swamps and thrive in remote habitats, is so difficult that experts don’t know how many there are in Florida, though they estimate there are at least tens of thousands. More than 18,000 have been removed since 2000, including 2,500 in 2022, according to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Melissa Miller of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida is helping lead a largescale python removal project, which also hopes to get a better sense of the snakes’ abundance by attaching trackers to more of them and the Reproduction measures from more females. (She’s also part of a team of university experts known as “Croc Docs” who study wildlife in South Florida and the Caribbean.) Another part of the project will use drones to track multiple pythons at once. One day, a genetic biocontrol tool could emerge to suppress the population, she said.
“We don’t have a reliable estimate of how many are out there,” Miller said. “They are a kind of warning not to publish petsto make sure you report invasive species immediately.” Florida has a hotline for this: 888IVEGOT1.
Pythons are so large that they cannot easily be kept in places to study. The USGS (US Geological Survey) study proposed building a research center to conduct captive and smallscale testing.
In late 2021, a team from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida found what is believed to be the largest Burmese python ever recorded in the state: a 97 kg female with 122 eggs in her.
“It helps to imagine what she ate, in terms of pounds of native wildlife, to achieve that,” said Ian Bartoszek, the group’s environmental science project manager.
Bartoszek said the pythons have adapted to Florida over time, with those closer to the coast behaving slightly differently than those inland. But native species have also adapted, and python hatchlings now have some predators: snakes, crocodiles, and at least one lynx, which was spotted on camera attacking a clutch of python eggs.
“The Everglades,” Bartoszek said, “are fighting back.” / TRANSLATION LÍVIA BUELONI GONÇALVES
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