Feds Launch Python Eradication in Florida

The National Park Service and other federal agencies are starting a program they all hope will reduce the huge and growing population of Burmese Pythons in Florida, especially in the Everglades National Park.

US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says there are as many as 100,000 Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades. These reptiles can grow to be 26 feet long and more than 200 pounds, and they have been known to swallow animals as large as alligators. They and other constrictor snakes kill their prey by coiling around it and suffocating it.

Many of the pythons were pets that were turned loose by their owners when they got too big.  Now the pythons are wiping out large numbers of raccoons, opossums, bobcats and other mammals in the Everglades. Scientists say the pythons are disrupting the food chain and upsetting the Everglades' environmental balance in ways difficult to predict.

Secretary Salazar and Florida officials say this is an emergency that demands immediate attention. They say it's not possible to completely eradicate the pythons, but they can reduce their numbers to levels that aren't harmful to the Everglades' natural balance.

Wildlife officials are exploring a number of approaches, but so far, it appears the most effective tactic is to pay bounties to hunters willing to capture or kill the pythons.

via Eradicating Everglades Pythons Will be a Formidable Task | National Parks Traveler.

They should declare year-round no limit open season on Burmese Pythons. Hunters should be allowed to go into the glades at their own risk to kill the pythons, and sell the hides for whatever the market will pay.  There is a worldwide market for snake skins.

No limit hunting would kill off pythons faster than they can reproduce.  A few years of that would bring the python population down to controllable levels, which would allow officials to shorten the hunting season and set kill limits.

A number of states allow controlled alligator hunting to keep gator populations down, and it works.  Why not pythons?

This would also create a new idea for a TV show. We have alligator hunters on cable TV.  If the feds allow python hunting, we'll be watching intrepid snake  hunters chasing them and killing them on TV every night.  Coming soon to a cable channel near you.