Plans for pythons
Ideas to control snakes in Everglades run from practical to wacky.
Maybe mongooses could protect the Everglades from pythons. Or terriers. Or drones.
The public had a wide range of ideas when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission asked for suggestions on how to break the grip of the giant Asian constrictors on the Everglades. Some were reasonable, some wacky, but the state says it will consider all of them.
The FWC has held seven meetings around the southern third of the Florida peninsula this month to gather ideas.
Thousands of Burmese pythons are thought to live in the South Florida wetlands, where they kill small mammals such as marsh rabbits and opossums, eat alligators and wading birds and compete with panthers for deer.
“Introduce mongooses,” suggested Victoria Olson, of Fort Lauderdale. “They have been successful in Puerto Rico and The U.S. Virgin Islands to eradicate snakes, and yes they can kill a python.”
Famous for their ability to kill cobras in southern Asia, the mongoose may be able to kill younger, small pythons. And it has been widely used in the Caribbean to kill rats on farms. But state wildlife officials have heard this proposal before and fear mongooses would bring problems of their own, eating native snakes, native mammals, pets and bird eggs.
Wayne Owensby, of Dania Beach, who has caught three pythons — including a 10-footer — in the Everglades, said a real-time database of the latest python catches would help hunters focus their efforts in the most fruitful areas.
“What areas are we finding them in now? I would concentrate on that area to be more effective,” he said.
One company proposed the use of aerial drones with infrared sensors that could detect snakes at night, with an impressive video showing a man seizing a snake identified by the drone.
For all their menace, pythons aren’t particularly bright. David A. Nystrom, of Boca Raton, noted that pythons have died from eating golf balls they thought were eggs. So he suggests setting out hundreds of fake eggs, too big to
entice native snakes but small enough to lure pythons to make the fatal decision to eat them.
Abandoning the idea of eradicating the pythons, one plan would attempt to protect native wildlife from them. Ralf Thilen, of Parkland, proposed stringing barbed wire around trees to protect colonies of wood storks and other wading birds.
“Four-legged animals would soon learn to avoid the wire where as the pythons could not slide over it,” he said.
And why not use one despised species to catch another? Scott Bruner, a bass fisherman who sees pythons in Everglades canals, suggests using iguanas, nonnative lizards that have established themselves in huge numbers in South Florida neighborhoods, as python bait.
“This would actually solve two problems at once,” he said.
If not mongooses, why not another famed snake killer? Lucie Montes, of Davie, suggested Australian terriers, which have been bred to kill snakes and rodents.
Although their odds of surviving in the Everglades may seem low, she said, “They’re tenacious and ferocious.”
The meetings are intended to contribute to an an interagency python management plan that will guide state and federal efforts to fight the big snakes, which arrived in the Everglades from the exotic pet trade.
Asked the commission’s opinion of some of these proposals, spokeswoman Sarah Lessard gave a diplomatic response.
“Since we are still reviewing and evaluating public comments from the python workshops, we wouldn’t want to speculate as to the effectiveness or viability of any of the suggestions posed,” she said. “We place a high importance on public input and want to give each suggestion the time for evaluation it deserves.”