HUNTING PYTHONS: BLOOD. SWEAT. $8/HR
Lucrative bounties, Everglades preservation motivate hunters
Bagging an egg-laden, 15-foot Burmese python in the Everglades brought Leonardo Sanchez and his friends $675.
Judging from what they went through to catch it, there are easier ways to make money.
“One of my friends tried to grab her as she was making a turn in the trees, and the snake came up right in front of his face and was looking him in the face ready to bite him,” Sanchez said. “He started saying ‘whoa, whoa, whoa.’ I jumped on it chest first and the snake came up to bite me, and she had my whole thumb in her mouth, and she bit it once and let it go. I started dripping blood from my hand really bad, and I was wiping it on
my pants so I wouldn’t lose the grip on the snake.”
Finally wrestling the 144-pound reptile up onto a levee, they dispatched it with a 9 mm pistol shot to the head. Inside, they found 70 or 80 eggs, making this a particularly effective kill for containing the plague of pythons in the Everglades. The snake was one of more than 800 caught this year in what may be the most successful program ever aimed at the huge constrictors that are killing the Everglades’ mammals, wading birds and alligators.
Authorities have tried everything against pythons — tracking them with dogs, holding python-catching contests, allowing deer hunters to kill them. The secret to the success of this program? Money.
The South Florida Water Management District pays eligible hunters $8.10 an hour to look for pythons on its vast landholdings, which encompass much of the Everglades, although not Everglades National Park. Hunters get a $50 bonus for every python measuring at least four feet, with $25 for each foot beyond. They receive an additional $200 for each eliminated python nest with eggs. And Sanchez and his friends supplemented the water management district’s payment for their 15-footer by selling the skin to an exotic leather dealer for $350.
The hunters represent all kinds. Some spend their days in office cubicles, classrooms and other sedate locations, then don swamp gear, pick up their shotguns and hit the Everglades at night. Others are full-time outdoors enthusiasts.
“We have people who have day jobs, people who have night jobs, some have computer jobs, technical jobs,” said Rory Feeney, land resources bureau chief for the water management district. “We have hunters, herpetologists, military veterans. We have folks from the west coast of Florida, the east coast of Florida. But the thing that they all share in common is they all care for the Everglades, they all know the issues. They all want to help solve this problem that we have.”
Motivations include money, adventure and a desire to defend the Everglades.
“What thrills me is the fight, the fight that the snake gives you. That’s my adrenaline rush,” Sanchez said. “We really have developed a brotherhood out there. We try to share information and just have a great time. The Everglades is a very beautiful place and we get to recharge and reconnect. We go to the Glades, take them out and we’re saving the ecosystem and all the animals of the Glades.”
Patrick Campbell, a highly successful snake hunter who majored in biology in college and conducted reptile research in Costa Rica and Peru, finds no pleasure in catching and killing creatures that fascinate him
“I’m not one of the ones who enjoys killing the snakes,” he said. “I know a lot of us really love snakes, and it hurts us to have to put them down. But I’m a Florida native so I do recognize the ecological importance of having some kind of management program in place.”
Despite his qualms, he turned out to be a deadly hunter, accounting for about 45 pythons. He caught his biggest, a monster of 15 feet, 10 inches, along the L-67 levee that runs through the Everglades of Miami-Dade County. Driving his Nissan Xterra SUV along the levee at night with his girlfriend, both pointing spotlights out the windows, he saw five or six feet of giant snake sticking out of the cattails, its head up. Grabbing it expertly by the head, he decapitated it with a machete and smashed the brain with a hammer.
Destroying the brain immediately is considered essential for a humane kill.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has criticized the hunt, saying bounties for animals rarely work and that media reports showed unskilled hunters allowing snakes to suffer rather than dispatching them cleanly.
“Shooting sensitive snakes multiple times and inflicting gaping wounds on them would cause egregious and unnecessary suffering,” Tracy Reiman, executive vice president of PETA, said in a news release. “PETA is calling on the authorities to ensure that any participants in this or other hunts who kill snakes in horrible and illegal ways are held accountable for breaking the law.”
The district says it has taken such concerns seriously as it tries to fight the python infestation.
“The South Florida Water Management District is taking aggressive action in eliminating as many of these invasive, destructive pythons as possible from its public lands to protect native wildlife,” the district said in a statement. “This agency believes all killings must be conducted in a humane manner. Rules of the Python Elimination Program direct all participating hunters to follow American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines in the eradication of these snakes. District staff review all claims/ complaints levied against the program’s hunters and will continue to enforce the rules of the program.”
The hunt has been limited so far to Miami-Dade, Broward and Collier counties. The largest number of snakes were caught in Miami-Dade County, which attracted the most hunters because it has historically had the most pythons, said Feeney, of the water management district.
Laid end-to-end, the pythons caught this year in the district’s program would extend well beyond 5,000 feet, longer than four Empire State Buildings, according to the water management district.
“We’re very pleased with the results we’ve gotten so far,” Feeney said. “About 5,000 feet of snakes and over 10,000 pounds of python have been removed since March. That represents the largest capture rate of pythons since they’ve been discovered in Florida.”
Impressive as this year’s tally is, it represents a small fraction of the pythons in the Everglades. No one knows how many are there, but estimates have run into the tens of thousands and higher. And with the pythons established and breeding in marshes that offer almost perfect camouflage, no one expects them to be eradicated. At best, authorities hope to hold their numbers down.
The pythons arrived in South Florida via the exotic pet trade. The leading theories either blame owners for releasing unwanted snakes in the South Florida wilderness or the destruction of a breeding facility in MiamiDade County in Hurricane Andrew. The pythons have feasted on the Everglades’ mammals, devastating populations of marsh rabbits, raccoons and opossums and even taking down full-grown deer.
Omar Gomez, 37, of Kendall, a successful hunter who calls himself a “thrill junkie,” accounted for more than 20 pythons. As he became more experienced, he learned how to hunt more effectively. He learned to drive relatively fast along the levees and look for snakes, rather than crawling at a few miles an hour to scrutinize every inch of ground. He ditched his handgun and started carrying a 12-gauge shotgun, which didn’t require so precise an aim.
But even that weapon wasn’t always immediately effective. Driving along a levee, he saw the white, shiny belly of a snake that turned out to be nearly 14 feet long. He jumped out of his truck, leveled his shotgun and fired a blast at its head.
“It was still fighting, even with being shot,” he said. “I couldn’t get it out of the water and it had wrapped itself up on a tree. It looked like a dinosaur. As I’m trying to pull it out, I see the tail 10 feet away and I’m like how big is this thing. Was able with a buddy or two to yank her out.”
With a successful year behind them, managers of the program are looking north. They plan to expand the program into Palm Beach County, largely at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, which lies west of Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Boynton Beach. Although they expect this to yield fewer snakes, they say a systematic search in Palm Beach County could establish the northern boundary of the python population.