Wow, this has really become an ecological disaster:
In areas where the pythons have established themselves, marsh rabbits and foxes can no longer be found. Sightings of raccoons are down 99.3%, opossums 98.9% and white-tailed deer 94.1%, according to a paper out Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“What if the stock market had declined that much? Think of the adjectives you’d use for that,” says Gordon Rodda, an invasive-species specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) who published research in 2008 showing that Burmese pythons could conceivably expand across the southern portion of the United States.
“Pythons are wreaking havoc on one of America’s most beautiful, treasured and naturally bountiful ecosystems,” says USGS Director Marcia McNutt.
I remember when we drove down to Flamingo, on Florida Bay, the only place in the world (I think) where alligators and crocodiles coexist, and seeing a family of raccoons on a hike.
At least they’re not endangered species. If they can figure out some way to exterminate the snakes, they could be repopulated in the Everglades from other regions. I suspect that the solution may be some kind of engineered tasty poison that only affects Burmese pythons, but we probably aren’t that far along in the tech yet.
I suspect the key is recipes and python-leather jacket/boot craze.
That might help, but as the article notes, they’re not that easy to hunt or find. It might reduce the snake population, but perhaps not to the levels needed for the prey to repopulate. It could provide a new source of income for the Seminoles and Miccosukees, though, if the meat and leather can be made popular enough.
I guess I prefer hunting to a bio-warfare type solution. Hunting can always be cut back on, there’s no cut-back for a virus or a potentially-equally-invasive snake-eater after it’s in the open. Eventually the snakes will reach carrying capacity for the region (or starve themselves after they’ve eaten all the easy prey), but with this kind of penetration, we’re probably at the “rabbits in Australia” stage.
What happens to the gorillas, Dr. Hibbing?
Heh, heh, they just freeze to death in the winter!
A new reality show would do it. Make python hunting a no-license (or minimal cost) deal, put out a casting call, and you have a good couple of seasons, at least, of “Python Hunters” ready to go.
How do you know that sightings of raccoon are down 99%? The same people who approved this paper also think the Earth is getting warmer and mankind is to blame. If you can’t trust them on one thing, how can you trust them on another?
Gerrib just gave me an idea: trolls, sterile ones with no hope of mating…
I agree with Chris Gerrib. Make this a national holiday.
Seriously, I grew up in Florida. They just didn’t look in the right place. All the racoons and possums you could possibly want live in suburban back yards, and I used to see rabbits as well in the wilder spots in some of the local parks when I lived in Orlando (lots of the parks there are actually part of preserves so they’re pretty wild), and I’ve seen what I was sure were foxes heading across vacant lots on my way to work in the morning.
A bigger problem in the Everglades than giant snakes are all the foreign plants that have encroached on it, especially the huge forests of melaleuca. These trees were deliberately planted decades ago to suck up all the swamp water, because that’s what they do in Australia, and then when draining the swamp fell out of fashion everyone realized they were stuck with a weed that was rapidly taking over. These trees are also extremely flammable — like a lot of Australian trees, they actually use fire to propagate, when the trees catch on fire the seeds explode and go everywhere. Also a lot of people are allergic to the pollen.
The solution to the melaleuca problem is to plant hemp. In fact, I can show you a huge amount of data to show that planting hemp will solve virtually every problem…
I don’t know what you mean. Melaleucas are a weed — the concern isn’t planting something in their place but controlling them. Besides, cutting them down just disperses the seeds.
If it truly were a snake (CO2)crisis, the alarmists would be screaming for an open season on Pythons and Constrictors(adopt Nuclear Power) and not just a limited three day special season.
I didn’t know families of raccoons went on hikes. 🙂
As with any predator-prey relationship, the population of pythons will quickly start to fall as they thin their food supply too much. I’m not really sure why this is perceived as such a problem. Are they eating livestock or something not mentioned in the article?
The problem I have with the article is the implied conclusion that a reduction in sightings of critters means a reduction in the population of critters, i.e. they’ve been eaten. Whereas that is probably true for some, the more likely cause of the decrease is that the critters have vacated an increasingly hostile environment. Our little furry friends are adapting by moving. This is pure conjecture but it’s not unlike what is observed when new housing developments infringe on habitat. The first couple of years you continue to see fox and wildlife but eventually not so much.
Reduce the population of pythons and the critters will return.
If they’re taking out white-tail deer, then they have to be some pretty major pythons. It would definitely attract the “extremeophiles” and adrenalin junkies among the hunters. Especially if they made a “reality” show on, say, Discovery, where the hunters are armed with only what weapons they can make from the surrounding materials…
A white-tailed fawn weighs about 3 pounds at birth. Burmese pythons can grow to 200 pounds, so these are snack size.
In Texas, there are no hunting seasons for non-indigenous species like wild pigs or monk parakeets or Burmese Pythons. They can be hunted anytime, anywhere that you can lawfully discharge a firearm or other weapon. I don’t doubt this is true in Florida as well.
The problem in Everglades National Park is that one cannot lawfully discharge a firearm inside the park boundaries. I doubt seriously that large pythons outside the park boundaries are a problem. I am certain that sport hunters have already gone after them.
There is no sport in hunting pythons. They are generally found beneath the grass at water level. Florida could offer a bounty and every country boy with time on his hands would be pulling them from the water. If the population there brought alligators to the brink of extinction they could certainly do the same to the python population. It’s just a matter of time.
The problem is that The National Park Service is too pig headed to let free lancers in to hunt them. The skins have some worth as leather and snake meat makes really tender, delicious jerky. This is clearly a case where the government is not letting markets work.
I read about this in one of Dave Barry’s “you won’t believe this about Florida” columns some years ago. I thought then, how about a trap that looks and smells like food, but when completely cut off from light for 24 hours, deploys spikes in every direction, right in the belly of the snake?