Officials give up on evicting pythons — big but nearly invisible in the wild — from Everglades [View all]

[n2doc]

Only in Florida can a search for one invasive monster lead to the discovery of another.

On a balmy Sunday recently, a group of volunteers called Swamp Apes was searching for pythons in Everglades National Park when it stumbled on something worse: a Nile crocodile, lurking in a canal near Miami suburbs.

It was an all-points alarm, prompting an emergency response by experts from the national park, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the University of Florida. They joined the Swamp Apes and wrestled the reptile out of the canal. Nile crocs are highly aggressive man-eaters known to take down huge prey in Africa, and officials worried that the one in the canal might be breeding in the swamp since it was first spotted two years ago.

Worrying is what Florida wildlife officials often do when it comes to invasive species. The state is being overrun by animals, insects and plants that should not be there, costing Floridians half a billion dollars each year in, among other things, damaged orange groves, maimed pets and dead fish in water where plants have depleted the oxygen.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/big-but-nearly-invisible-in-the-wild-officials-give-up-on-evicting-pythons-from-everglades/2014/03/16/58cab268-aa37-11e3-8599-ce7295b6851c_story.html