FL Game Fish and Wildlife Conservation Holding Contest for Burmese

Who "downgraded" you for being in the Army? In a round about way, I was complimenting the Army. By the way, it's Afghanistan and Haiti. You sorta made my point a bit clearer with your retort. Have a nice day.

Chris

Originally Posted by cajunreptiles

yes the army is proud of what ive done lets see deployed to iraq-1 afhgan-1 hati-1 africa-1. I think its funny that i get down graded for being in the army and actually doing something with my life. I never disrepected you in any way shape or form. Alot of you think you rule the world cuz youve been on this site for almost 10 yrs. the only reason i havent been on here for that long is cuz i had more important things to do with my life then talking on a website.

Actually, I just think you really need to educate yourself before responding to posts.

That's not an insult.

Your comment about human life being endangered by Burms in FL substantiates it enough to keep it from being insulting.

Originally Posted by ShadowAceD

Actually, I just think you really need to educate yourself before responding to posts.

That's not an insult.

Your comment about human life being endangered by Burms in FL substantiates it enough to keep it from being insulting.

I was not saying that human life would be endangered just by berms. I said if we were to slow down on reproducing when thats what god put us on the earth to do, that would cause us to not exist. Also my comment wasnt even directed to you.

I'm not sure how good you are at math, but we're reproducing at a pretty good clip. Even if you want to go the religious route, I'll play. We've been fruitful, we've multiplied. It's taken care of, we can back off now. I don't think we have to be concerned with the human race becoming extinct due to lack of reproduction anytime soon. That line of "logic" is just ridiculous.

Chris

Originally Posted by cajunreptiles

I was not saying that human life would be endangered just by berms. I said if we were to slow down on reproducing when thats what god put us on the earth to do, that would cause us to not exist. Also my comment wasnt even directed to you.

God put us on Earth to reproduce? That's a new argument I have not heard, but that would be assuming I believe in God, which I do not.

Slowing down reproduction for sustainability would not wipe out the human race.

We "cull" other species all the time to keep them from overpopulating, we do not do the same to us because it is seen as barbaric, uncivilized, "un-American" and a bunch of asinine things when actuality, it would be responsible to slow down on the reproduction of more humans.

However, changing the mindset of the masses to see this likely will not happen and the destruction of the human race will be by the hands of the human race and we will be nothing more than a blip on the radar that is the vast wide universe and its existence.

The arrogance of man is blatantly shown in how he treats "lesser" animals.

To the person that stated that we should send the burms back to where they are from, It is quite too late for that. Not only are there too many, and no one will want to pay for it. But, the simple fact that many (if not all) of the snakes in the everglades were born there, they now carry parasites and other microbes, that are not native to their homeland. Transferring them "back" to the country of origin and releasing them, will me introducing a microscopic invasive species, that may or may not have a devastating impact on various species native to that area. Why does no one think of this before releasing species into a new area, or transporting animals from one place to another?

Cajunreptiles, being a former military person myself, I urge you to do research on these subjects before commenting on them, being in the military does not excuse ignorance. It is obvious that you have not researched much on the topic. Also, a Google search is not the best thing to do, try looking for some actual scientific studies. I assure you that many of us commenting on this thread have done our research and do not pull punches, figuratively speaking.

Here are links to some peer reviewed scientific journal articles that I found with a five minute google scholar search. Most (if not all) of these you can only read the abstracts of, but they still contain a great deal of good information that is likely of interest to most folks here.

Full articles:
Final Report: Genetic characterization of populations of indigenous Burmese python in Everglades National Park (2008: Co-authored by Skip Snow, a stand-up guy I met in a conference in Miami a few years back)

Birds consumed by the invasive Burmese python (Python molurus bivitattus) in Everglades National Park, Florida, USA (2011)

Some interesting information of the back-and-forth that's been going on in the scientific community about possible range of Burmese python in the United States. I haven't read the full articles to provide a critique of methodologies on either side, I'll admit. Also note that due to the time some of these articles reside in review means that authors may not be able to see or respond to different models within a year of publication (for example, it took eleven months for my last journal article to go through the peer review process).

Claims of potential expansion throughout the U.S. by invasive python species are contradicted by ecological niche models (2008)

What parts of the US mainland are climatically suitable for invasive alien pythons spreading from Everglades National Park? (2009)

Cold weather and the potential range of invasive Burmese pythons (2010)

A critique of the analysis used to predict the climate space of the Burmese python in the United States by Rodda et al. (2008, 2009) and Reed and Rodda (2009) (2010): A word of warning about this article... it was published in the Bulletin of the Chicago Herpetological Society, which as far as publications go is extremely weak, thus I question the soundness of this critique. I have not read the entire article, but the explanation in the abstract was less than stellar.

Cold-induced mortality of invasive Burmese pythons in south Florida (2011)

i believe that these hunts are a good thing it shows Florida trying too solve a state problem... as for total eradication of the Burmese i don't see it happening i kinda believe in the Jurassic park theory as life will find away and ether the small fuzzy creatures will adapt or die out simple as that. as for the human population well mother nature is a b@tch and sooner or latter the homo sapien species will have contend with it own predator and either we will adept to the predator or go extinct

Snowgyre, here is another one. AbsoluteApril found it, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2490718/

Aaron and others, would it be worthwhile to create a thread where we can post these articles as they are published for easy reference for everybody? It would not be a discussion thread, simply a source of information. I think I may be one of the few on the forum who spends any amount of time perusing the primary literature, with the exception of Frank, the Bronx Zoo's retired herpetologist who recently joined here.