Page 2 - Python Elimination Program News Today

Donna Kalil in the field with a captured Burmese python. COURTESY PHOTO It’s dusk in the Everglades, and the hunt is about to begin. Burmese python hunters Donna Kalil and Marc Rodriguez ready their gear. Mr. Rodriguez’ pickup is outfitted with a rack of high-intensity lights and a wooden platform, a python perch to stand

Donna Kalil in the field with a captured Burmese python. COURTESY PHOTO It’s dusk in the Everglades, and the hunt is about to begin. Burmese python hunters Donna Kalil and Marc Rodriguez ready their gear. Mr. Rodriguez’ pickup is outfitted with a rack of high-intensity lights and a wooden platform, a python perch to stand

Conservancy biologist Ian Bartoszek with a 17-foot, 163-pound female python and a new male scout snake captured in February 2023. COURTESY PHOTOS As invasive Burmese pythons tighten their grip on the Everglades, decimating wildlife and devouring nearly everything in their path while slithering north to Lake Okeechobee and west toward the Gulf of Mexico, the

Samantha Smith, a Croc Docs wildlife biologist at UF/IFAS Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, shown locating a tracked Burmese python. UF/IFAS / COURTESY PHOTOS University of Florida wildlife scientists are scouting for Burmese pythons in the Everglades by using previously captured pythons to lure, locate and learn how the invasive species is thriving in

The Burmese python is an invasive species in the Florida Everglades.

Mike Kimmel scours the Everglades looking for Burmese pythons to capture. Kimmel contracts with the South Florida Water Management District’s Python...

A program that pays python hunters to stalk them in the Everglades has turned out to be the most successful python-control program ever.

Burmese pythons slither around the Florida Everglades, and typically, they are caught and euthanized as they pose a threat to the ecosystem. In the stomach of one 18-foot snake that was captured and put down, scientists found an entire five-foot alligator swallowed whole!

One trapper 28 Burmese pythons and won the $10,000 grand prize for most pythons caught. The longest python measured just over 11 feet, earning the winner $1,500.

The winners in this summer’s come-one, come-all Florida Python Challenge were announced Thursday in a contest that drew nearly 1,000 professional and amateur hunters from three countries and removed 231 invasive snakes from the Everglades.Burmese pythons are not native to Florida and negatively impact native species and are found in and around the Everglades ecosystem. A female Burmese python lays up to 100 eggs at a time. Since 2000, more than 17,000 wild Burmese pythons have been removed fro...