YES they are doing it!! (the FL laws for large snakes)

$100 *each* year? In my case, with one snake within the species list, that'd be no problem, but I had several animals within these species or, heaven forbid, I was breeder, that's a big amount to pay EVERY year...unless I'm reading it wrong.

I don't think it is $100 per snake. Just $100 per year to own any number of them, but I'm sure they have to be registered.

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The South Florida and Everglades rarely EVER have severe freezes, so some pythons can survive there. I will not believe that a warm-weather species python will survive through extended freezing temputures. How many pythons have lived in the wild anywhere other than South Florida

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What do you consider severe freeze? 20 degrees? 30 degrees? There are periods of time in Florida where the weather stays around 60 day time and 30-40 at night. Pythons have been known to develop RI's below 70 and if a wild Python gets an RI, it is a goner.

Yes it is only for $100 for the permit. As long as the reptiles you own that are under the Concern list are chipped and registered then your fine.

I consider a severe freeze to be of extended time. A couple of hours at 31F.. not really a hard freeze.
IF a wild python found a deep burrow, it might survive a light freeze, IF it was healthy and did not develop an RI, and the burrow was warm enough for it not to become torpid.
Much further north than the Everglades, and you get hard freezes a couple times a year. I'm in mid-florida, and we had a few freezes where it got to 25F? for several hours, and only went about freezing well after daylight. It did that three nights in a row. Would anyone count on their burmese or retic surviving that sort of cold without treatment?

I love hearing more people trusting in personal freedom and responsibility than trusting a new "law" or government regulation on everyone to solve a problem.

I posted this in another forum:

What I find "interesting" is that the American Alligator can go from their low numbers to over 1 million and that's a good thing, but a couple hundred Burmese pythons can be let go in the Everglades and suddenly they're disrupting the balance of nature!

If there was a 20ft python naturally in the Everglades and their numbers were in the hundreds, it would be put on a critically endangered species list for fears of its extinction! And environutjobs would blame humans for it. Yet for some reason just because these pythons weren't naturally put there, they're going to overpopulate and kill off native species. HUH?????

Don't you think the over 1 million alligators are eating more of those native species than a couple hundred "critically endangered" pythons?

Just helping us all think out of the box a little.

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Originally Posted by bait4snake

I love hearing more people trusting in personal freedom and responsibility than trusting a new "law" or government regulation on everyone to solve a problem.

I posted this in another forum:

What I find "interesting" is that the American Alligator can go from their low numbers to over 1 million and that's a good thing, but a couple hundred Burmese pythons can be let go in the Everglades and suddenly they're disrupting the balance of nature!

If there was a 20ft python naturally in the Everglades and their numbers were in the hundreds, it would be put on a critically endangered species list for fears of its extinction! And environutjobs would blame humans for it. Yet for some reason just because these pythons weren't naturally put there, they're going to overpopulate and kill off native species. HUH?????

Don't you think the over 1 million alligators are eating more of those native species than a couple hundred "critically endangered" pythons?

Just helping us all think out of the box a little.

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You've made a pretty good argument here and I understand your points, but it is flawed in that you are comparing the american alligator, an animal that is NATIVE to that environment, to a burmese python, an animal that is from the other side of the world and has very few natural predators. The dynamics of what could happen if the population establishes itself are completely different.

Are you saying that burmese pythons and other ROCs in the everglades isn't a big deal? The consequences of thos reptiles establishing themselves and out-competing a native species absolutely could upset the ecosystem.

boy did i open a huge can of worms

Alligators have few natural predetors(once grown), as do the burmese pythons(once grown).

Technically, if they did breed, the large number of hatchlings might be a good food item for a lot of Everglades wildlife... the eggs would be eaten by numerous animals as well(if they get to them).

I still do not think alligators were ever at the low numbers that they reported. I think the reports were faulty.

That said, large non-native snakes with no predetors once full size are NOT a good thing for the Everglades. The place is at a delicate balance already due to people draining it, polluting it, and developing it. I'd bet that feral cats eat thousands more native species in south florida than the feral(released) pythons do. I don't see any programs for eliminating the cats.. but cats are fuzzy wuzzy warm-blooded furpeople. Snakes are easier to paint as a villian.

Here is the website of the USGS article that is the basis for all of the news stories we've been seeing lately.

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1875

If you look at the maps at the bottom, it just makes absolutely no sense that burms could survive to become invasive species that far north. There must be something wrong in their calculations.

LOL I would love to see some prarie burms :rolleyes:. The green on those maps needs to be shrunk down to the lower half of FL. The fact that I see North Carolina in there, which has temps that drop to the teens for long periods of time, along with the severe ice storms make me believe this BS even less.