Everglades Python Hunt A Bust - Maybe 50 Snakes Killed Out Of Estimated 150,000

[Yo_Mama]

5. Sightings of large ones are increasingly common

They've been breeding there for quite a while. 12 to 17 feet snakes are being sighted and caught.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/08/scientists-show-largest-python-ever-found-everglades/55733/
With clutches ranging from 20 to 60 eggs, the problem is ballooning.

There is some pretty strong empirical evidence that they are disrupting the ecosystem:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/23/1115226109

Before 2000, mammals were encountered frequently during nocturnal road surveys within ENP. In contrast, road surveys totaling 56,971 km from 2003–2011 documented a 99.3% decrease in the frequency of raccoon observations, decreases of 98.9% and 87.5% for opossum and bobcat observations, respectively, and failed to detect rabbits. Road surveys also revealed that these species are more common in areas where pythons have been discovered only recently and are most abundant outside the python's current introduced range. These findings suggest that predation by pythons has resulted in dramatic declines in mammals within ENP and that introduced apex predators, such as giant constrictors, can exert significant top-down pressure on prey populations. Severe declines in easily observed and/or common mammals, such as raccoons and bobcats, bode poorly for species of conservation concern, which often are more difficult to sample and occur at lower densities.

Although this particular effort was doomed to fail, all the other efforts have also failed dramatically. Eventually I suppose they will begin eating each other, but that isn't going to leave a whole lot of the native ecosystem. The rabbits in some areas are about gone, and that does in the bobcats. Threatened domestic species are heading straight for extinction in their native habitat.


PS: One of the purposes of this hunt was that the university collecting and cataloging the snakes will do a survey of the captured snakes. They are looking for all sorts of data, including stomach contents. The locations of the captures are supposed to be logged, and the idea was that this gimmick might generate some useful data. In particular, the stomach contents will be reviewed to see what they were eating in an attempt to confirm or deny the conclusions of the above study. They will also do genetic studies on them.
http://clikhear.palmbeachpost.com/2013/south-florida/broward-county-miami-dade-county/python-challenge-2013-hunting-snakes-in-the-everglades/