Florida tackling python problem with hunting contest

This just doesn't sound like a good idea. How do they guarantee a humane kill, how many Eastern DBs, Kingsnakes or Indigos (etc) will be killed. I think I could go on.

Florida tackling python problem with hunting contest
By Kim Segal, CNN
updated 7:12 PM EST, Thu December 6, 2012

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
•The state of Florida is launching the month-long 2013 Python Challenge
•The goal is to cull the exploding population of Burmese pythons, wildlife officials say
• Participants are given training for safety, instructed to kill the snakes humanely
• Researchers say pythons have devastated rabbit, fox, opossum and bobcat populations

Miami (CNN) -- Burmese pythons have been threatening Florida's ecosystem for years, so the state is turning to the public for help in the form of a hunting contest to cull the population.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has announced the 2013 Python Challenge beginning in January.
"We are hoping to gauge from the python challenge the effectiveness of using an incentive-based model as a tool to address this problem," says Florida Wildlife Commission spokeswoman Carli Segelson.
A grand prize of $1,500 will be awarded to the person who kills the most pythons, and $1,000 will go to the person who bags the longest one. According to the rules, road kill will not be eligible.
Participants will pay a $25 registration fee and complete an online training course. The training focuses on safety while hunting pythons.


"It's very difficult to find these animals and we don't really have a good strategy on how to contain this population," said Linda Friar, spokeswoman for Everglades National Park. "This is a pilot to see if it will gain public interest in areas that you can hunt so that they would be able to remove and capture these snakes."
The Burmese python is native to Southeast Asia and was first found in the Everglades in 1979, according to researchers at the University of Florida.
These snakes were determined to be an established species in 2000. It is believed that the snakes were originally pets that found their way into Everglades National Park.
The Everglades, known as the river of grass, is a vast area with a climate perfect for the pythons to hide and thrive. And thrive they do: The largest Burmese python on record was found in the Everglades in August, its 17-foot, 6-inch carcass weighing in at 164.5 pounds. Researchers at the University of Florida found 87 eggs inside the snake.
Friar told CNN earlier this year that it is believed "tens of thousands" of Burmese pythons live in the Everglades.

The snakes prey on native wildlife such as the endangered Key Largo wood rat and the endangered wood stork. The largest prey, Friar told CNN, was a 76-pound deer that was found in the stomach of a 16-foot python a few months ago.
Earlier this year, researchers at Virginia Tech University, Davidson College and the U.S. Geological Survey reported that populations of rabbits and foxes have disappeared and numbers of raccoons, opossums and bobcats have dropped as much as 99%.
In January, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service instituted a ban on the importation of Burmese pythons -- along with three other species of exotic snake -- and their eggs.
The Python Challenge has laid out four specific areas where the snakes can be harvested, and the park is off-limits to the general public.

"The park is very restricted on what it can do as far as animal captures and removal," Friar said.
The python problem has spread to other wildlife management areas in the state besides the Everglades.
"We're supportive of the state exploring various measures in order to reduce the populations outside the park," Friar said. In the end, she said, "it will also reduce the population of the snakes that get into the park."
According to the rules of the contest, reducing the population means killing the snakes.
"We want to make sure this is done in a humane way," Segelson said. The competition's website lists several ways to kill a python "in a humane manner that results in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the brain."

It suggests shooting the snake in the head with a firearm or decapitating it with a machete.
Wildlife officials say the 2013 Python Challenge is not only about killing snakes. "One of things that is very important to us is to educate the public about the Burmese python and how this species is impacting the state of Florida," Segelson said.
"We're hoping to inform people ... if they do have exotic pets that they understand the importance of not releasing them into the wild."

The contest begins January 12 and ends at midnight on February 10.

Article Here

It's a hunt sponsored by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. If you kill a non-Burmese python, you better believe your buttox is going to be slapped with a hefty fine AND your hunting license will be revoked. I don't think accidental kills will be a problem.

I actually think this is a good idea. It's very difficult to get a true population estimate when we (meaning biologists) simply don't have the money to locate the animals ourselves. Creating a hunt not only helps reduce numbers of this nonnative, invasive species, but also gives us better biological information on the snakes themselves. Regardless of where you stand on the Burmese python issue, the fact of the matter is that we still need science to be done, and these animals still don't belong there.

Posted this in the Gen Herp Talk forum, but thought it would fit here as well.
Honestly, I think that the state should be trying to make some money off from the Pythons. Pay a bounty for them then process the "pelt" and meat for use by consumers. I know I would purchase Burm meat. Fried snake is actually pretty good. And, the snake pelts can be used for a lot of different things, boots, belts, wallets, purses, ect. Then they should take all of the money raised from the snakes to invest in conservation of the everglades, up to and including removal of other ferral species and habitat management for endangered species.

By Matt Smith, CNN
updated 10:32 PM EST, Mon January 14, 2013

We saw hundreds of gators and beautiful migratory birds, but no pythons," said Reisinger, who spent his weekend poking around Big Cypress National Preserve with about a half-dozen old buddies.

Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission launched its month-long "Python Challenge" on Saturday, hoping to get rid of some of the tens of thousands of invasive snakes that have found a home in the River of Grass. Nearly 800 people, lured by prizes of up to $1,500, have signed up to hunt down the pythons in cold blood.

But only 11 Burmese had been bagged by Monday afternoon, agency spokeswoman Carli Segelson said.

State wildlife officials say there may be as many as 100,000 Burmese pythons living in the vast swamps outside Miami. By comparison, the state is home to about 1.3 million alligators.

"You can go out there for days and days and days and not see one python," snake hunter Justin Matthews said. "I don't care how much experience you have. It is going to take some luck."

Reisinger said the unseasonably warm weekend may have cut into the haul. He said he and his companions were shooting for "the coldest weekend we could find," hoping the reptiles would be in the open to soak up the sun.

Florida hunting contest aimed at pythonsInstead, weekend highs were around 80 degrees, well above normal even for south Florida.

"There's some stuff that was very hairy and hard to get through, and machetes were helpful," Reisinger said Monday after returning home to Asheville, North Carolina. Then there were sections of swamp "that were easy to walk through," but had their own hazards: "When you can clearly see gators 100 feet in front of you, it makes it more intimidating sometimes," he said.

The pythons began turning up in the Everglades in 1979, most likely abandoned by pet owners when the snakes got too big to handle. They have no natural predators and can reach lengths up to 18 feet.

Rabbits and foxes have disappeared, while raccoon, opossum and bobcat populations have dropped as much as 99%, researchers at Virginia Tech University, Davidson College and the U.S. Geological Survey reported in 2012. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has banned the importation of Burmese pythons, along with three other exotic snake species and their eggs.

The great snake hunt could be a boon to scientists like University of Florida wildlife ecologist Frank Mazzotti, who was preparing for a post-mortem on one python Monday morning.

"This is going to give us our largest single one-time sample, most snakes over the biggest area, that we have ever been able to collect," Mazzotti said. "And we're going to be able to ask questions about contaminants, things like mercury, genetics -- can we identify new individuals from the core population -- or diet, to help us address the very important question about what impacts these species have on our native ecosystem."

While the pythons can run to double-digit lengths, Mazzotti said the average snake runs about 6 to 9 feet.

State officials recommend shooting the snakes in the head or decapitating them with a machete. A grand prize of $1,500 will be awarded to the person who kills the most pythons, and $1,000 will go to the person who bags the longest one -- and no, roadkill doesn't count.

The contest wraps up February 16.

"I'm not a hunter. I'm not a herpetologist," Reisinger said. "I'm just more of someone looking for a good time and a chance to drink my beers with some buddies in the woods -- and if you can help the environment, too, that's great."

CNN's John Zarrella and Kim Segal contributed to this report.

Article here...

So, they are stating that the mesopredator populations are dropping... Yep, I have a feeling that my "filling the niche" hypothesis is closer and closer to being supported... And you know, it also couldn't be caused by the alligator now being protected in the state or anything, since they were almost hunted to extinction at one time...

Shock, horror, now surely a responsible department like FWS would not over estimate the number of the snakes for some political purpose?

"I'm not a hunter. I'm not a herpetologist," Reisinger said. "I'm just more of someone looking for a good time and a chance to drink my beers with some buddies in the woods -- and if you can help the environment, too, that's great."

Yeah, and I suppose if someone like this sees a big old indigo snake or eastern diamondback sunning itself nearby and no one is looking, do you REALLY think they won't shoot that as well? Surely that will be just as much a "good time" as shooting a python would be.

Seems like a boneheaded stunt if ever I've heard of one.

And yeah, the pythons are a HUGE problem but they couldn't find any to shoot at. Bummer for them....

Originally Posted by WebSlave

And yeah, the pythons are a HUGE problem but they couldn't find any to shoot at. Bummer for them....

I've gone hunting for feral hogs many times and have never seen one, despite their super abundance in some areas. Nobody questions that feral hogs do a great deal of damage. I've gone deer hunting for thousands of hours and have a relatively low success rate when you look at the ratio of time spent versus number of deer I've killed and seen, yet no one seems to argue that deer/vehicle collisions are a problem.

Invasive species are a problem. Just because the Burmese python issue has gotten a lot of fear mongering press and has a lot of political nonsense associated with it does not mean that Burmese pythons aren't a problem. They're a big snake in an area that has never had giant snakes before. It is reasonable to assume that the native wildlife is unaccustomed to being hunted by this particular brand of giant predator. Out of sight should not be out of mind.

Warning: Science Ahead

When we (meaning wildlife biologists) are trying to estimate the number of animals in a population, our population estimates are based upon something called "detectability." If you fail to observe an animal in the field, that failure is based upon two probabilities: 1) that you didn't observe the animal because it wasn't there, or 2) that an animal was actually there but you failed to detect it.

This hunt will, hypothetically anyway, allow biologists to increase the precision of our population estimates for Burmese python because it will allow us to estimate what that "detectability function" actually is. For a species as cryptic (aka hard to see) as a Burmese python, I can imagine detectability is very low.

For a real-world example, biologists over in Europe have estimated detection probabilities for several species of snakes. The probability of detection is highly dependent upon population size... at low population sizes, detectability is very low. The following data were taken from: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.230...21101552516103

Detection Probabilities for 3 species of European snakes
The following probabilities are arranged for low, medium, and high population sizes:
asp viper (Vipera aspis: 23%, 50%, and 70%
smooth snake (Coronella austriaca): 9%, 45%, 56%
grass snake (Natrix natrix): 11% for small, 25% for medium/large pop'ns

Keep in mind that these detection probabilities were estimated from biologists who had search images for these species and were very good at locating snakes. These are trained professionals, not the everyday public, so their detectability estimates are likely higher than this Burmese python hunt will generate. These estimates are also for heavily surveyed individual sites, not over an entire range a species could possibly inhabit.

The take home message from all of this is that snakes are very good at hiding. We have statistical tools to estimate populations based upon real data. Is it perfect? No. However, we can't assume that just because we didn't capture a whole lot of Burmese pythons that there aren't a whole lot out there, it simply means that we may have failed to detect those that are. That's why we need to keep looking. More data = better science.

Florida python hunt yielding relatively few snakes
February 11, 2013 by Ben Wolford

Fewer than 48 hours remain in Florida's Python Challenge, and the snake kill count is - wait for it - 50. Same as it was Tuesday.

State wildlife officials are calling the invasive-snake bounty hunt a success, but for all the pomp and urgency, some hunters are not pleased.

"I don't feel the epidemic is as bad as they're saying," said Mike Singleton, 39, of Tampa, who participated in the hunt the first weekend, but became disillusioned and quit.

By the numbers, it doesn't sound good. At least 1,563 hunters registered to participate in the contest, which lasted a month. The number of Burmese pythons in the Everglades is said to be in the hundreds of thousands.

One participant, Ruben Ramirez, 40, of Kendall, a Miami suburb, said he and a friend hunted most of the days and sometimes covered 20 miles a day.

So where are all the snakes? From interviews with experts and seasoned hunters, a few theories emerge about the low death toll, each probably true.

For one, the average temperature during the Python Challenge approached 80 degrees, and snakes didn't need to find sunlight out in the open, experts said.

But more important, hunting snakes isn't like hunting buffalo on the plain.

"Everybody thought they were going to come out here and be stumbling across pythons," said Ramirez, who claims he has hunted every day but three. He didn't deny a rumor that he's probably winning the contest, but he wouldn't say how many pythons have died by his hand.

"A lot of people got frustrated real quick," he said. "Two, three days in the blazing sun. The guys who kept at it were walking 20 miles a day. It's not a walk in the park. I've lost, like, 20 pounds from before it started. My pants are falling down."

Not only is snake hunting hard work, some say these hunters have no idea what they're doing.

On Thursday, two twenty-something hunters from Tennessee who had been sleeping in their car got lost and called for help. When a Broward County search helicopter found them 15 miles from the nearest civilization, they were disoriented, overheated and dehydrated.


Kenneth L. Krysko is a snake researcher at the University of Florida's Museum of Natural History, which, unlike the university itself, was unaffiliated with the Python Challenge. Krysko opposed the bounty as an extermination method on the grounds that armed amateurs ought not roam the Everglades unsupervised.

"The reason people aren't catching that many is they don't have a clue where to look," he said. "Look at all the yahoos coming down here."

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which sponsored the Python Challenge to raise awareness of invasive species and to put a dent in the population, says the contest accomplished those goals and more.

"This is the largest sample of pythons in Florida for such a short period of time," FWC spokeswoman Carli Segelson said.

The data gleaned from such a sample is valuable for hatching new population-control plans, she said.

There have been rumors of cheating, drunkenness and target practice against native animals, including at least one turtle, say reptile enthusiasts. One hunter said he declined offers from two friends to give him pythons to turn in for the contest. Segelson said she hasn't seen evidence of any of this.

The FWC has never released an estimate on the Everglades python population. It's impossible to count in such remote areas, experts agree. So any number is purely speculation.

Including this one: "There may be as many as 150,000 of these snakes just in the Everglades National Park," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said last month at Big Cypress National Preserve.

This kind of talk benefits politicians and grant-funded researchers who stand to gain from a perception of rampant Southeast Asian snakes devouring furry native critters, some say. You hear this argument loudest from those in the reptile trade who fear increased pet regulation.

And even if there were hordes of pythons in Everglades National Park, the contestants were not allowed to hunt there. Hunters have griped about that as another possible reason the kill count was only 50.

Shawn Heflick, 44, of Palm Bay, was the first person in Florida to hold a permit to hunt pythons after he began work with the FWC and the National Park Service on a python eradication program in 2009. That's when people first tossed around the idea of a bounty hunt. Subsequently, Heflick and two colleagues co-hosted the National Geographic Wild TV show "Python Hunters."

Yet he believes officials are inflating the snake emergency.

"You've got individuals who clearly benefit from the idea of there being a huge number of pythons out there," he said, adding that it's distracting from other, more serious, problems - like feral cats.

Homeless felines kill billions of native songbirds and rodents. The FWC acknowledges this on its website and includes a picture of an adorable housecat. Its picture of the Burmese python has a target on its head.

Segelson said the Python Challenge has spurred interest in other kinds of invasive species problems.

"We're pleased with the amount of attention (the Python Challenge) has received," she said.

When the contest's award ceremony is finished on Feb. 16 and the 2013 Python Challenge is history, Segelson says the FWC will send out a questionnaire to find out how hard most hunters actually tried. It's possible hundreds registered but never put in the time.

Ultimately, no one really expected truckloads of carcasses. But everyone was hoping.

Original article here.

(CNN) -- They can reach lengths of 18 feet and their numbers are estimated to be in the tens of thousands, but Burmese pythons, a nuisance in the Everglades, aren't easy to find.

"It's an amazing challenge to try to come out and hunt these big snakes," hunter Dennis Jordan told CNN Miami affiliate WSVN in the closing days of the 2013 Python Challenge sponsored by state officials.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced Saturday that 68 Burmese pythons were killed during the January 12-February 10 competition that drew 1,600 registrants lured by prizes of up to $1,500.

Though the take was small, wildlife officials said their main aim was heightening public awareness of the invasive species.

First kills made in python challengePython hunt to curb snake numbers"Thanks to the determination of Python Challenge competitors, we are able to gather invaluable information that will help refine and focus combined efforts to control pythons in the Everglades," commission executive director Nick Wiley said.

State wildlife officials say there may be as many as 100,000 Burmese pythons living in the vast swamps outside Miami. By comparison, the state is home to about 1.3 million alligators.

"You can go out there for days and days and days and not see one python," snake hunter Justin Matthews said last month. "I don't care how much experience you have. It is going to take some luck."

Hunters covered a million acres of swamp and sawgrass, officials said.

Scientists examine record python found in Florida

The pythons began turning up in the Everglades in 1979, most likely abandoned by pet owners when the snakes got too big to handle. They have no natural predators.

Rabbits and foxes have disappeared, while raccoon, opossum and bobcat populations have dropped as much as 99%, researchers at Virginia Tech University, Davidson College and the U.S. Geological Survey reported in 2012. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has banned the importation of Burmese pythons, along with three other exotic snake species and their eggs.

While the pythons can run to double-digit lengths, University of Florida wildlife ecologist Frank Mazzotti said the average snake runs about 6 to 9 feet.

State officials recommended shooting the snakes in the head or decapitating them with a machete.

Hunter Brian Barrows of Fort Myers won a $1,500 grand prize in the amateur category for harvesting six pythons, as did Ruben Ramirez of Miami, who bagged 18 of the creatures in the competition for professional hunters.

Paul Shannon of Lehigh Acres won $1,000 for the longest python, which stretched 14 feet, 3 inches.

CNN's Phil Gast and Matt Smith contributed to this report.

Original article here.