Florida’s high-tech attack on unwanted snakes

Mark Potter Correspondent • E-mail

MIAMI - Walking gingerly through an overgrown field on the edge of the Everglades National Park in South Florida, wildlife biologist Skip Snow listened closely to the pinging sounds of a portable radio receiver.

As the electronic beeping grew louder, Snow knew he was getting closer to his prey — a 10-foot Burmese python lurking somewhere in the tall grass.

But as he walked on, the radio sounds began to soften, and Snow stopped suddenly. "Now the snake is no longer in front of us, it's back behind us," he warned.

Retracing his steps, he slowly circled a thick clump of vegetation, then froze, pushing apart the grass.

There, curled in the shade, was the long black and brown reptile that had been surgically fitted with a small radio transmitter. Park officials hope this so-called "Judas animal" will lead them to other invasive snakes, so they can be captured and killed.

Unwelcome park visitors
In the vast park, with its subtropical mystique and exotic species, the non-native Burmese pythons have found a new home and are flourishing.

But they have made themselves so unwelcome that wildlife officials are aggressively fighting back. 

"They're eating pretty much everything in Everglades National Park," said Superintendent Dan Kimball. "They seem to be eating machines."

Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia and are among the largest snakes in the world. They can grow longer than 20 feet.

Thousands of these snakes are imported every year into the United States, and they are also raised domestically to be sold as pets.

A problem is that they can grow very quickly, especially in captivity — upwards of four feet a year.

"We can have a 12-foot snake in under three years and have breeding animals in three to five years," said Todd Hardwick, the owner of Pesky Critters, a Miami animal pest-control company.

Over the years, as the large constricting snakes outgrew their cages and became more difficult to handle, many pet owners released them into the wild.

In the warm Everglades, the freed Burmese pythons found suitable habitat and began to breed. More than 200 of them have been found in just the last few years, many of them along the main road used by tourists and fishermen visiting the park.

"I think they're going to be breeding as fast as we're capturing them," said Hardwick.

Skip Snow, the park biologist who runs the program to study and eradicate the snakes, said, "We've found Burmese pythons in more places each year than we did before. We're also finding more size classes." 

A threat to native species
Wildlife officials worry that in Florida the Burmese pythons have no natural enemies to control their spread.

They are believed to be a serious threat to native birds and mammals, which they either eat or crowd out of their nesting and hiding places.

Stomach analyses prove the snakes eat wading birds, rodents, rabbits, raccoons and even bobcats.

On a few occasions now, park visitors have witnessed fierce battles between pythons and the Everglades' top predator, the alligator.

Last fall, scientist found a 13-foot python that had ruptured and died after swallowing a six-foot alligator.

Pictures of the two entangled animals were circulated widely on the Internet, and some people concluded the python had "exploded."

Opinions vary on how the rupture might have happened, but some park officials believe the alligator's sharp back claws tore through the snake's skin after it was swallowed.

No one can be certain if the alligator was dead or alive at the time.

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