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  1. #1
    Bogertophis's Avatar
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    Pythons, Invasive and Hungry, Are Making Their Way North in Florida


    Pythons, Invasive and Hungry, Are Making Their Way North in Florida




    Pythons found in Florida have measured longer than 15 feet and weighed more than 200 pounds. (Getty Images)


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    Patricia Mazzei
    Tue, March 14, 2023 at 1:13 PM CDT






    MIAMI — So much for all the efforts to slow the proliferation of Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades over the last two decades, including with paid contractors, trained volunteers and an annual hunt that has drawn participants from as far as Latvia: The giant snakes have been making their way north, reaching West Palm Beach and Fort Myers and threatening ever-larger stretches of the ecosystem.
    That was one of the few definitive conclusions in a comprehensive review of python science published last month by the U.S. Geological Survey, which underscored the difficulty of containing the giant snakes since they were first documented as an established population in the state in 2000.
    Little is known about how long Burmese pythons live in the wild in Florida, how often they reproduce and especially how large the state’s python population has grown, according to the review, which called the state’s python problem “one of the most intractable invasive-species management issues across the globe.”
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    Nor is it known how exactly they travel. The review theorized that South Florida’s extensive network of canals and levees “may facilitate long-distance movement by pythons,” though it suggested that slithering and swimming to points north may take awhile.
    “One python transited continuously for 58.5 hours and traveled 2.43 kilometers in a single day,” the review said of a snake followed with radio tracking.
    More research should be conducted to develop and evaluate new tools to eradicate pythons and to refine existing ones, the study found, adding that controlling the species’ spread is critical to protecting the Everglades. Earlier studies found that Burmese pythons, which are nonnative apex predators originally from South Asia, had decimated native species, including wading birds, marsh rabbits and white-tailed deer.
    Pythons found in Florida have measured longer than 15 feet and weighed more than 200 pounds, the review found; even hatchlings can be more than 2 feet long.
    The pythons’ voracious spread is all the more alarming given the billions of dollars that the state and the federal government have spent on restoring the Everglades, the review noted, calling invasive species “one of the greatest threats to restoration success.”
    Florida, with its subtropical climate, numerous entry ports and prolific live animal trade, has at least 139 established invasive species, meaning that they are reproducing in the wild, according to the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. More than 500 nonnative species have been reported in the state over time.
    Pythons, like invasive iguanas, have been known to emerge from the occasional South Florida toilet bowl; the review notes that while Burmese pythons have mostly been spotted in and around Everglades National Park and other swamplands, many have also been found in Naples and the western outskirts of Miami.
    Once a year, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission holds a python hunt open to the public, challenging people to find and remove as many snakes as they can. Participants must take a training course online or in person about humanely killing pythons using either preferred mechanical methods, like a stun gun, or manual ones, like hunting knives, since the hunt does not allow the use of firearms. Last year’s winner took home $10,000 for hunting down 28 pythons.
    Dustin Crum, who has been hunting pythons for a decade, took home $1,500 for capturing the longest snake in the competition, an 11-footer. He won in the same category in 2021 after catching a 15-footer.
    “We started out doing this stuff as a hobby and just couldn’t believe we could catch giant constrictors like that in the wild,” said Crum, 42, who now hunts pythons full time. The state pays hunters $50 per foot for the first 4 feet of snake and $25 for each subsequent foot, he said, as well as an hourly rate. Outside of the state-sponsored competition for the public, Crum does use guns to kill the snakes.
    “I’ll say a little prayer: ‘Hey, it’s not your fault,’” he said.
    Sometimes, scientists ask to get the pythons alive so that they can be tracked. Hunters like Crum deposit them in designated drop boxes during night hunts and email researchers to come get them 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. By 2000, scientists had documented multiple generations of pythons living across a relatively large geographic area in the Everglades and Florida’s southern tip.
    The realization that pythons were prodigiously reproducing and nearly wiping out native species helped lead to regulations restricting python importation and ownership. But by then, it was too late to stop their spread.
    Detecting pythons, which like to hide in marshes and thrive in remote habitats, is so challenging that experts do not know how many exist in Florida, though they estimate that 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 large-scale python removal project that also hopes to get a better sense of the snakes’ abundance by putting trackers on more of them and measuring the reproductive output of more females. (She is also part of a team of experts at the university, known as the “Croc Docs,” that researches wildlife in South Florida and the Caribbean.) Another part of the project will use drones to track many tagged pythons at once. Someday, a genetic biocontrol tool might emerge to help suppress the population, she said.
    “We don’t really have a reliable estimate of how many are out there,” Miller said. “They’re kind of a cautionary tale to not to release pets, to make sure you report invasive species immediately.”
    Florida makes it easy with a hotline: 888-IVE-GOT1.
    Pythons are so large that they are not easily kept in enclosures to study them. The USGS review suggested building a research center to conduct captive and small-scale trials.
    In late 2021, a team from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida found likely the largest Burmese python ever recorded in the state: a 215-pound female with 122 eggs inside her.
    “It helps you visualize what it ate, in pounds of native wildlife, to get to that,” said Ian Bartoszek, the environmental science project manager for the group.
    If there is any good news in the USGS review, it is that there have been no reports of humans in Florida being killed by wild pythons, which squeeze their prey to death before swallowing it; captive pythons are responsible for the few recorded fatalities.
    Python breeding season generally extends from November to March or April, Bartoszek said. The team at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida uses tagged male pythons as “scouts” to lead researchers to females. This season, a VIP — “that’s Very Important Python,” Bartoszek said — named Jesse led the team to two large females within two weeks.
    “We’ve had to do a lot of kayaking out to some of them this season,” he said. Female pythons in the area that the group studies have been smaller lately, he added, a sign that tracking and hunting them might be making a dent in the number that survive long enough to get big: “It’s getting very hard for those animals to find us females,” he said.
    Hurricane Ian, the powerful Category 4 storm that crashed into Southwest Florida last September, did not have much effect on the pythons his team tracks, he added. Prolonged cold snaps have killed off some snakes in the past, the USGS review noted, but such weather has become increasingly rare in southern Florida.
    Bartoszek said pythons had adapted over time to Florida, with those closer to the coast behaving slightly differently than those inland. But native species have adapted, too, and python hatchlings now have a few predators: snakes, alligators and at least one bobcat that was caught on camera preying on a clutch of python eggs.
    “The Everglades,” Bartoszek said, “is fighting back.”
    © 2023 The New York Times Company



    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For anyone wanting the link-

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/us/pythons-florida-invasive-species.html#:~:text=A%20study%20from%20the%20U.S.,management%20issues%20across% 20the%20globe.%E2%80%9D


    Last edited by Bogertophis; 03-14-2023 at 09:01 PM.
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  2. #2
    Bogertophis's Avatar
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    I love how this headline was designed to panic... when in reality they're still way way down in south Florida. Not saying they belong there though- they sure don't.
    Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
    Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

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  4. #3
    BPnet Veteran Homebody's Avatar
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    Re: Pythons, Invasive and Hungry, Are Making Their Way North in Florida

    U.S. Geological Survey? Don't geologists study rocks? What are they doing studying pythons?
    1.0 Normal Children's Python (2022 - present)
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  5. #4
    Bogertophis's Avatar
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    Re: Pythons, Invasive and Hungry, Are Making Their Way North in Florida

    Quote Originally Posted by Homebody View Post
    U.S. Geological Survey? Don't geologists study rocks? What are they doing studying pythons?
    Probably hoping they turn to stone?
    Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
    Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

  6. #5
    Registered User YungRasputin's Avatar
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    i am skeptical tbh - the article seems fundamentally flawed insomuch as i don’t see any mention of Burm’s primary means of long distance travel - “rafting” - they’re exceptional swimmers as well, capable of holding their breathes for 30+ min at a time and traveling great distances in open ocean - so to me, i feel like if they were truly migrating up North it would a) be easy for them to do so and b) their presence would be pronounced, and clear and not (seemingly) speculative

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Homebody View Post
    U.S. Geological Survey? Don't geologists study rocks? What are they doing studying pythons?
    i mean there are Afrocks in FL so 🤔
    het for nothing but groovy

  7. #6
    Registered User YungRasputin's Avatar
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    Re: Pythons, Invasive and Hungry, Are Making Their Way North in Florida

    Quote Originally Posted by Bogertophis View Post
    I love how this headline was designed to panic... when in reality they're still way way down in south Florida. Not saying they belong there though- they sure don't.
    i want to say feral cats and dogs represent more of an ecological threat to Floridian ecosystems than do pythons - i still think relocating Burms back to Asia is the best solution since their populations have been in decline there as a result of ongoing industrialization and habitat loss
    het for nothing but groovy

  8. #7
    BPnet Veteran Malum Argenteum's Avatar
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    Re: Pythons, Invasive and Hungry, Are Making Their Way North in Florida

    Quote Originally Posted by YungRasputin View Post
    i still think relocating Burms back to Asia is the best solution since their populations have been in decline there as a result of ongoing industrialization and habitat loss
    If a species declines because of habitat loss and degradation, reintroducing animals doesn't help.

    Also, given the pathogen transfer that occurs with relocated animals -- the parasite Raillietiella orientalis that was introduced to North America with Burmese pythons;populations of Florida burms are distinguished in part by the unique strains of Nidovirus that they carry: most importantly for this specific situation Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola that has been found in Florida Burmese pythons but has apparently not ever been reported in wild snakes in Asia; -- that's not likely a viable solution.

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  10. #8
    Registered User YungRasputin's Avatar
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    Re: Pythons, Invasive and Hungry, Are Making Their Way North in Florida

    Quote Originally Posted by Malum Argenteum View Post
    If a species declines because of habitat loss and degradation, reintroducing animals doesn't help.

    Also, given the pathogen transfer that occurs with relocated animals -- the parasite Raillietiella orientalis that was introduced to North America with Burmese pythons;populations of Florida burms are distinguished in part by the unique strains of Nidovirus that they carry: most importantly for this specific situation Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola that has been found in Florida Burmese pythons but has apparently not ever been reported in wild snakes in Asia; -- that's not likely a viable solution.
    oh i didn’t know this - i was just assuming it would be a matter of finding healthy specimens and genetically testing if they were pure Burm and that would be that - unfortunate
    het for nothing but groovy

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    Bogertophis's Avatar
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    BTW, I'm not sure where the black box near the top came from- It should say "The New York Times". Oh well.
    Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
    Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

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    BPnet Veteran Snagrio's Avatar
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    Re: Pythons, Invasive and Hungry, Are Making Their Way North in Florida

    Quote Originally Posted by YungRasputin View Post
    i want to say feral cats and dogs represent more of an ecological threat to Floridian ecosystems than do pythons - i still think relocating Burms back to Asia is the best solution since their populations have been in decline there as a result of ongoing industrialization and habitat loss
    Cats especially have been responsible for the systematic reduction if not outright total destruction of countless wildlife species. All it took was one cat to drive an entire population of an island bird species to extinction.
    https://www.odditycentral.com/animal...an-a-year.html

    But because they're considered cute and lovable by most people they're allowed to roam outside around the world and slaughter everything in their path. But no no no it's the big scary snakes in one tiny corner of the world that's the REAL issue we need to be constantly fearmongering about and threatening the rights of everyone else over.

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