Florida’s high-tech attack on unwanted snakes

High-tech surgery and ‘Judas’ snakes
In fighting back, scientist have gone both low-tech and high-tech.

Park officials are training a beagle named "Python Pete" to sniff out unwanted snakes. And they are educating schoolchildren to the dangers of freeing pet reptiles, and are sponsoring a "Don't Let it Loose" campaign.

At Davidson College in North Carolina, biologists anesthetized four pythons that were captured in the Everglades and surgically fitted them with antennas and radio transmitters.

One of the snakes was a 16-foot giant that aggressively bared its teeth as it was prepared for the procedure. It took quite a few students to carefully hold it tight.

When the snakes recovered from their operations, they were flown back to Florida, and were released back into the national park. 

Tracking their constantly emitting signals, scientists have collected valuable information about the snakes' habitat and travel patterns and so far have been able to capture and kill 12 other snakes that were drawn to the "Judas animals."

Florida considers python law     
The python problem is of such concern that a number of Florida state agencies and schools have gotten involved, including the South Florida Water Management District, which maintains some of the land where pythons have been found.

Florida lawmakers are considering a bill that would make it a third-degree felony to release Burmese pythons and other large reptiles or to negligently allow them to escape.

Pet owners would also have to register and photograph their large snakes and pay a $100-a-year fee to keep one.

State Rep. Ralph Poppell, who sponsored the bill, says too many casual python buyers have no idea about the serious problems they could face, and the damage they could do to the environment.

"What we're trying to do is bring some common sense and reality into something that some people look at as being harmless, until they have an encounter with it," Poppell said. "Please be careful with what you're bringing into our state."

Poppell says most in the reptile pet industry support the legislation and are concerned about the ecological impacts of non-native snakes’ being introduced into the wild.

Some pet store owners, however, worry that the annual fees will chase away many of their buyers.

"There's no way somebody's going to pay an extra $100 for a $50, $60, $70 snake," said Rian Gittman, owner of the Underground Reptiles store in Deerfield Beach.

He also argues that the proposed law, if adopted, would have the unwanted effect of making it even more difficult to control the snakes. "It will force a lot of people to just buy them out of state and go underground with it," he said.

Threat to humans? 
Although the Burmese pythons are quite large, and to most people can appear quite frightening, wildlife experts say they don't normally target people as prey and pose only a limited threat to humans.

A few deaths have been reported but typically involve careless pet owners attacked by their caged reptiles.

"I think there's a better chance of somebody getting hurt swerving a car around a python crossing a road and having an accident, than having an encounter with one," said Kimball, the Everglades National Park superintendent.

But biologist Snow, and pest control expert Hardwick agree that people should not confront or pester these big snakes should they stumble across them in the outdoors.

"They do have the tools to kill people," says Snow. "They clearly have the ability to give you a very nasty bite. They have a mouthful of teeth, double rows of teeth in the top that are backward pointing, and very sharp."

It's yet another concern for scientists and park officials, as they confront a very large intruder that poses an ecological threat to South Florida — its new home.

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