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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 from Florida.