Quote Originally Posted by xFenrir View Post
Tegu's are also a big problem in Florida, if I remember correctly.

I understand that Burms and other invasive species are changing the environment and forcing out native species, but I kind of feel that that's life. Evolution will take its course, and either animals will evolve to adapt to new predators/prey or they will unfortunately be wiped out. Isn't that nature though? It's happened a million times before on Earth, it's just now we think we can do something to stop it.

I mean, look at humans. The single most disruptive and destructive animal on the face of the Earth, but we aren't trying to remove ourselves. We think we belong here more than anything else. :/

I dunno, I feel like since Burms/etc are so settled in, eradicating their population is pretty much impossible.
Their population is not major. They do not have high numbers, they are not outnumbering many of the native fauna, it's all misguided statistics based on the Nature Conservancy, as much as I love those people for their work with endangered species. None the less, to say that "evolution will take over" is a very misunderstanding of the feats of evolution in action. You have to remember that a factor of evolution is time. Lots and lots of time. Humans are the reason we have to put species on the endangered list, because they can not adapt fast enough to deal with our presence in areas we once were vacated from.

We have to continue to control the native population because they are native and their species has a right to survive. By allowing invasives to overrun "out compete" our native population we are in essence allowing a species with no right to survive in that area, out compete a species who has the right to continued existence. The thing that triggered the burmese python stuff in Florida started because scientist found a wireless transmitter from an endangered species they were monitoring (rat species) inside a burmese python. This led to population surveys to give us an idea of the density these pythons had established. Thanks to flawed surveys, and well paid researchers who are pro anti species endangerment (please note the sarcasm in that tone), numbers were generated that made this issue look out of control . . . If you go to the everglades, chances are you will not find a burmese python. That seems pretty surprising giving the latest polls stated 36-50k were inhabiting the everglades.

On that note - eradicating the population in the wild is still plausable, but moot. Cold spells kill them off. It's been proven with research from a univeristiy in South Carolina... However, the bans are simply hurting the industry and those who seek to use these amazing animals in education classes across the US to encourage respect toward snake populations in the wild, and an appreciation for the populations in captivity.

Will the ban do anything? Heck no . . . I'm pretty sure that if a DPS officer pulls you over crossing state lines and sees your snake and you call your burmese a reticulated python, they will not know a bit of difference. . . this is the government stepping in to fix a problem that will in the end be able to fix itself, or have other means of a solution at a STATE level, and not a federal one. . As an officer told me the other day when we were talking snakes . . . "I can kill our enemies or die for my country trying, but when I come home, I can't even take my best friend across state lines" . . .