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Sixteen Foot-Long Python Captured At Everglades National Park

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This huge Burmese python recently was captured and removed from Everglades National Park. NPS photo.

A Burmese python more than 16 feet in length and tipping the scales at 140 pounds has been captured at Everglades National Park, evidence of the problem park officials face with the spread of these non-native constrictors.

The female snake was captured Monday after a park staffer came upon it while spraying non-native vegetation.

Park officials say that "many national parks struggle to manage the impacts on resources by invasive exotic animals and plants, but it seems that the Burmese python in the Everglades has captured the attention of the media and the public on this issue, which may help to focus attention on the larger invasive exotic problem that many land managers are grappling with."

"The park has spent the past few weeks emphasizing to the media and the public the importance of not letting unwanted animals or plants loose," notes Everglades spokeswoman Linda Friar. "It is important to focus on what we have learned from this experience to prevent future invasive exotic infestations and improve our ability to react quickly before a species becomes impossible to eradicate."

While pythons have been a problem in Everglades National Park for much of the past decade, the situation garnered heightened media interest recently due to a study blaming the snakes for a "precipitous declines" in mammals that once were commonly seen in parts of the park.

Though members of the park’s staff are working on containment and science to better understand the impacts of this newest exotic in the park, it appears that eradication is currently not possible on a landscape the size of the park (almost 2400 square miles), Ms. Friar wrote in a release.

Comments

Dear Mary Wallace,
That snake is indeed a beautiful thing - in it's own habitat. Sliding around some jungle canopy in Burma it is undoubtedly a wonderful and vital part of its ecosystem.  However, it is NOT a normal part of the Everglades ecosystem. The animals there have no natural defenses against such snakes. Everglades mammals are disappearing at an alrming rate - down snake throats! It is necessary to kill them, exactly because the Everglades is a protected place. To keep the wildlife that BELONG there safe. I wouldn't advocate killing them if there was way to catch them all, but the number is simply too big to spend that much time and effort with a single snake when there are tens of thousands that need removal.
The Everglades is a wonderful place - nowhere on earth do I love more (I was a ranger there for five years) but it is a seriously challenged ecosystem. The water it depends on (it's a swamp you know) is all fouled up in regards to purity, timing of the flow, and depth of flow, it's all manipulated by man through dams. The native animals and plants, some found nowhere else on earth are being forced out of their habitats by invading plants and animals like the Burmese pythons, but also by plants like Brazillian pepper, fish like African tilapia, birds like the hill myna, etc. All wonderful and important cogs in their home ecosystems, but real trouble when released into ecosystems never meant for them where nature has no way to control them. That, sadly, is why we need machetes. The pythons escaped from the pet industry, no point in giving them back, and every zoo that wants one already has one.
You might want to check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invasive_species_in_the_Everglades
Bill O'Donnell


Its probably important to provide an update on this story. Yes, nearly all pythons that have been captured over the past decade have been euthanized. No, the number is not tens of thousands, its actually just over 1,800. Nearly half of those have been studied in the laboratory, and these investigations have yielded a better understanding of the species than we ever had from studies in its native range in southeast Asia. Every new removal provides an important data point that helps reveal a new chapter of the story.
Similarly, this large female will also provide us with new knowledge. As it turns out, this snake was not euthanized but was, in fact, spared for the purposes of tracking. Having been outfitted with a trial GPS transmitter she was rereleased into the park today. Over the next few months, she will help researchers find additional pythons and provide valuable insignt into behavior and movement.  
Mary, believe me when I tell you that no one working on ths issue takes pleasure in the task at hand. Ecologists, naturalists, and biologists all share a fundamental admiration of the spectrum of life on this planet. But the managerial mandate for Everglades (and most other NPS units) is clear: to "maintain the natural abundance, diversity, and ecological integrity of native plants and animals as a part of their ecosystem." And the ongoing investigations taking place in the Everglades are providing compelling evidence that the presence of pythons is taking a toll. Furthermore, these studys are the first step in finding an eventual control method.
The best bet against further tragedy is taking this lesson to heart and preventing future invasions...


Maybe Mary will be willing to adopt them all.


Eloquently put, Larry.  I'm assuming she was sterilized as well, so that any mating she engages in does not result in offspring.


Larry, thanks for your dignified response.  There is no reason to criticise people like Mary, who are most likely otherwise well-intentioned individuals that are simply ignorant of the dangers of invasive species and biological matter.  Instead, with your kind of help, people can get educated on the problem, which will be the best way to "deal" with these animals and plants.  
In the meantime, if a python wanders into one of the encroaching subdivisions (which raises the question of who is really being invasive, I suppose), people there have every right to pick up a machete and save the family dog, just as park staff could be doing in protected areas.  


It would seem to me a mistake to return something so lethal to anything in the food chain as that for research. Something smaller wouldn't do?


They should put a bounty on them and let local hunters earn some money.  Win, win. 


I'm a little disappointed in the personal  attacks, and political commentary in here


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