Latest news with #FloridaFishandWildlife
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
3 men catch monster Burmese python in Florida Everglades. Was it biggest ever captured?
Three hunters recently captured a massive Burmese python in the Florida Everglades. Zach Hoffman, Jan Gianello and Justice Sargood caught the invasive snake near Everglades City just after midnight on May 31. The constrictor was so large that Hoffman had to get a bigger tape measure. "At first we measured with a 15-foot tape measure that we had lying around, and it wasn't long enough," Hoffman said. "Then I took a measurement with a 25-foot tape. When I read the number out loud we couldn't believe it." First identified in Everglades National Park in 2000, the Burmese python may be the most destructive foreign animal in the park's history. The massive constrictors can grow to more than 18 feet and weigh over 200 pounds. Did the trio's catch break the record for the longest python ever captured? Here's what to know about the behemoth catch and the biggest pythons ever caught in Florida: Registration for the 2025 Florida Python Challenge — a 10-day event to remove invasive Burmese pythons — is open. This year's hunt runs from July 11 to July 20, Florida Fish and Wildlife announced May 15. Participants can win money prizes in several categories, including a $10,000 Ultimate Grand Prize. FWC works with partners and the public to hunt and kill the snakes, including the annual Florida Python Challenge. The 2025 Florida Python Challenge starts at 12:01 a.m. July 11 and ends at 5 p.m. July 20, Florida Fish and Wildlife announced May 15. There are $25,000 in cash prizes up for grabs for this year's hunt. The top prize of $10,000 goes to the person who catches the most pythons. Those with the most catches in the Novice, Professional and Military categories win $2,500, while runners-up in each group receive $1,500, and $1,000 is awarded for the longest pythons caught. There is no established firearm season during the time of the event. The use of firearms during the competition is prohibited. Burmese pythons captured in Florida must be humanely killed. While they are not protected in Florida, anti-cruelty law still applies. Step 1: The method should result in the animal losing consciousness immediately. These tools should result in the immediate loss of consciousness: Captive bolt Firearms (not allowed in the Florida Python Challenge and otherwise subject to property-specific and local rules) or pre-charged pneumatic (PCP) air guns Step 2: The animal's brain should be destroyed by 'pithing' which prevents it from regaining consciousness. The invasive snakes are distributed across more than a thousand square miles in the Everglades and southern Florida. Burmese pythons have been found across the state and are slithering north. They may even reach Georgia. At 12:30 a.m. on May 31, Zach Hoffman, Jan Gianello and Justice Sargood were on their way home from an uneventful night of python hunting when they decided to check one last spot and spotted a huge Burmese python 'laying halfway on the road, half in the ditch." Sargood grabbed the python's head and wrestled with it, while Hoffman and Gianello controlled the rest of the snake's body to keep it from coiling too tightly. ➤ 'We couldn't believe it': Giant python wrangled, caught by 3 hunters in Everglades Once they had control over the large python, it was humanely euthanized. They attempted to measure the snake with a 15-foot tape measure, but it came up short. A 25-foot tape measure did the trick, and the hunters determined the massive python to be 16 feet, 8 inches long. The hefty snake weighed 105 pounds. A group of python hunters caught the longest Burmese python ever measured on July 10, 2023, in the Big Cypress National Preserve in eastern Collier County. The monster snake was 19 feet long. The previous record was held by python hunters Ryan Ausburn and Kevin Pavlidis who captured a python measuring a whopping 18-feet 9-inches in 2020. In 2013, Jason Leon captured a then-record 18-foot python in southeastern Miami-Dade County. The massive snake weighed 128 pounds. Licensed python hunter Mike Kimmel, alone on a spoil island in the Florida Everglades, caught a 17-foot python in 2020. Conservancy of Southwest Florida biologists caught the heaviest Burmese python ever recorded in the Florida Everglades in 2022. The colossal female python weighed an eye-popping 215 pounds and was nearly 18 feet long. A 198-pound Burmese python was captured in November 2023 in the Big Cypress Preserve, making it the second-heaviest ever caught in the Sunshine State. The massive snake was 17 feet, 2 inches long. Support local journalism by subscribing to a Florida news organization. This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Burmese python caught in Everglades. Is massive snake largest ever?
New York Post
7 days ago
- General
- New York Post
2 charged in ‘hit-and-run' boating death of 15-year-old Florida ballerina mowed over while wakeboarding: officials
Two men have been charged in connection with the Florida hit-and-run boating death of 15-year-old wakeboarder Ella Adler more than a year after the tragic incident, officials announced Tuesday. One of the men charged, 78-year-old Carlos Guillermo Alonso, allegedly struck Adler with his 42-foot Boston Whaler in Biscayne Bay on May 11, 2024, after the teen had lost her grip on a tow rope attached to another boat and fallen into the ocean. The whaler struck the stranded Adler, leaving her floating in a large pool of blood in the bay, as Alonso, allegedly unaware of the fatal collision, continued driving and eventually made it back to his $3.5 million Coral Gables home. 3 Charges have been filed against two men in connection with the hit-and-run boating death of 15-year-old wakeboarder Ella Adler. Family Handout Witnesses said he didn't stop or slow down after running over the teen. The Miami high schooler and ballet dancer was celebrating a friend's birthday in Key Biscayne's Nixon Beach when she fatefully lost her grip on the tethered rope. Video showed Alonso calmly docking the boat just after the accident and making no effort to conceal or clean anything on the vessel, his lawyers argued. The 78-year-old was charged on April 28 with two misdemeanor charges for careless operation of a vessel, with officials citing Alonso for infractions of US Coast Guard Rule #5 — failing to keep proper look-out, and Rule #2 — failing in responsibility as a boat operator, Florida Fish and Wildlife announced. He forfeited the Boston Whaler to FFW investigators and has been fully cooperative with the probe, his lawyer previously stated. 3 One of the men charged, 78-year-old Carlos Guillermo Alonso, allegedly struck Adler with his 42-foot Boston Whaler in Biscayne Bay on May 11, 2024. WSVN 3 Video showed Alonso calmly docking the boat just after the accident and making no effort to conceal or clean anything on the vessel. CBS News 'He's a good man, and he is devastated by what has happened,' a lawyer for Alonso said last May. Richard Hartley, 31, who captained the boat that Adler was wakeboarding off of, was also charged with the incident. He faces a charge of careless operation of a vessel on four counts of violations of Coast Guard navigation rules, including Rules 2 and 5, as well as Rule 7, Risk of Collision, and Rule 8, Action to Avoid Collision, the FWC said. Adler was remembered as a talented and passionate dancer whose 'magnetism radiated on the stage, where she belonged and thrived,' according to her obituary. 'You were taken from us way too soon, and the world has been robbed of all the things you could have achieved,' her father Matthew Adler wrote in an emotional letter that was read at the funeral.
Washington Post
7 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
Two boat operators charged in wakeboarding girl's death in South Florida
MIAMI — Misdemeanor charges have filed against the man who was operating the boat that fatally struck a 15-year-old girl off a South Florida beach last year, as well as the man who was operating the boat she had been wakeboarding behind, authorities announced Tuesday. Carlos Guillermo Alonso, 79, was charged April 28 with violating two U.S. Coast Guard navigational rules, and Edmund Richard Hartley, 31, was charged April 29 with violating four Coast Guard rules, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said in a press release.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Bobcat kills huge Burmese python in Everglades. What other Florida animals hunt pythons?
Only about twice the size of domestic cats, Florida's bobcats may be small in size, but they're big in moxie. Case in point: A bobcat appears to have killed a massive, 13-foot Burmese python in the Everglades recently and made a meal of it. The 52-pound male python was a Conservancy of Southwest Florida scout snake nicknamed Loki. Scout snakes have implanted transmitters that are tracked and used to lure breeding females. The invasive snake was found in a pile of debris, apparently mauled, with its head smashed and slashed, and partially buried for later feeding. Researchers set up a camera at the site, which captured the bobcat returning to the cache hours later to feed on the dead python. It was the first time a bobcat has been documented killing and eating a python in Florida. Here's what to know about native wildlife that kills and eats invasive Burmese pythons in Florida: Conservancy of Southwest Florida scout snake Loki was found dead in a pile of debris, apparently mauled by a bobcat, with its head smashed and slashed, and partially buried for later feeding. The bobcat returned hours later to feed on the snake's carcass. In June of 2021, a bobcat feasted on Burmese python eggs in the Big Cypress Preserve. Yes. Alligators in Florida eat Burmese pythons. In a 2023 USGS study, baby Burmese pythons were outfitted with radio transmitters. Five of the pythons were eaten by alligators. On Thanksgiving Day in 2024, a large alligator, nicknamed "Godzilla," was caught on video hauling a massive Burmese python through the water in the Everglades. In 2019, a massive alligator was captured on video with a Burmese python in its jaws and slinging the large snake back and forth. In 2023, a Florida woman captured video of a 10-foot alligator in the Everglades eating a large Burmese python. Snakes kill and eat juvenile Burmese pythons. For example, in May of 2021, a Florida cottonmouth was confirmed to have eaten a juvenile Burmese python. The python's implanted transmitter led wildlife biologists to the cottonmouth in the Big Cypress National Preserve. Radiography confirmed the cottonmouth consumed the Burmese python. A Florida kingsnake made a meal of a tracked, one-month-old Burmese python as documented in September of 2022. Researchers followed the python's transmitter signal and found a kingsnake with a food bulge where the signal was strongest. They tracked the kingsnake until it passed the transmitter. Researchers suspect a black bear of killing a Burmese python. "The ground was completely trampled, and it smelled like a bear and the whole scene looked like a bear," wildlife biologist and python expert Ian Bartoszek said. "But was the snake dead and the bear scavenged it or did the bear predate the python." Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey documented a non-fatal investigative or defensive black bear attack on a Burmese python. According to Florida Fish and Wildlife, studies show that smaller Burmese python hatchlings and juveniles are on the menu for a variety of native Florida bird species. Dates for the 2025 Florida Python Challenge — a ten-day event to remove invasive Burmese pythons from South Florida — are set. This year's hunt starts at 12:01 a.m. July 11 and ends at 5 p.m. July 20, Florida Fish and Wildlife announced May 15. To register as a novice or professional, potential participants must first read the rules and take a free, required online training and pass a quiz with at least 85%. Those under 18 must have a parent or guardian complete their registration and be accompanied by a registered adult during the competition. The cost to register is $25 and not refundable. Participants can win money prizes in several categories, including a $10,000 Ultimate Grand Prize. While the use of firearms is prohibited in the Florida Python Challenge, you can shoot the invasive snakes on your property or someone else's property with permission, provided you follow the law and local regulations. Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia. Many of the invasive snakes came to the U.S. because of their popularity in the pet trade, according to USGS. The snakes were then intentionally or accidentally released in south Florida. The invasive snakes are distributed across more than a thousand square miles in the Everglades and southern Florida Burmese pythons have been found across the state and are slithering north. They may even reach Georgia. According to Florida Fish and Wildlife, Burmese pythons are established in Florida, from just south of Lake Okeechobee to Key Largo and from western Broward County west to Collier County, including: Everglades National Park Biscayne National Park Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area Big Cypress National Preserve Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge Picayune Strand State Forest Collier-Seminole State Park Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve Any pythons found outside of those areas are likely escaped or released captive animals. However, "due to the cryptic nature of pythons, it can take a while to gather enough evidence to confirm new areas of establishment," FWC said. It's hard to get an exact count, given the Burmese python's ability to live in various South Florida environments and the difficulty accessing some areas. "Burmese pythons are hard to find due to their cryptic coloration and secretive behaviors, and their low detection probability is a major challenge to effective python control and research," according to Florida Fish and Wildlife. Conservative estimates by the USGS put the Burmese python population in the Florida Everglades region in the tens of thousands. Support local journalism by subscribing to a Florida news organization. This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Burmese python killed by bobcat in Florida. What else preys on pythons
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Trump Rightly Pardons 2 Florida Divers Who Became Federal Felons Because of an Honest Mistake
Here are some things you don't do when you know you are committing a crime. You don't do it in broad daylight in front of witnesses. You don't enlist the help of those witnesses and invite them to record the event with their smartphones. You don't report what happened to a law enforcement agency or leave evidence of the incident in plain view in a public place. John Moore and Tanner Mansell, two Florida diving instructors, did all of those things on August 10, 2020, when they took Camryn Kuehl and her family on a snorkeling trip and came across a buoy-tethered fishing line that had caught 19 sharks. Moore and Mansell, who worked for a company that specializes in shark encounters, told the Kuehls the catch was "illegal." Based on that assessment, they hauled in the line and freed the sharks, reported the incident to Florida Fish and Wildlife Officer Barry Partelow, and followed his instructions by leaving the fishing gear on the marina dock in Jupiter. But after it turned out that the shark catch had been authorized as part of a research project, both men were convicted of a federal felony, even though the evidence suggested they had made an honest mistake. President Donald Trump reversed that injustice on Wednesday, when he granted pardons to Moore and Mansell. Unlike many of Trump's clemency decisions, such as his pardons for violent Capitol rioters and corrupt public officials who abused their powers for personal gain, his intervention in this case epitomizes how "the benign prerogative of pardoning," as Alexander Hamilton called it, should be used: to make "exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt," overriding "cruel" criminal penalties in circumstances that "plead for a mitigation of the rigor of the law." That certainly seems like an apt description of this case. Kuehl, who documented the shark release with photos that she posted on social media, testified that she "thought we were doing a great thing." That was the impression she got from Moore and Mansell, whose conduct suggests they were sincere in that belief. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Watts-FitzGerald nevertheless obtained an indictment that charged them with violating 18 USC 661, which applies to someone who "takes and carries away, with intent to steal or purloin, any personal property of another" within "the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States." During their 2023 trial in the Southern District of Florida, Moore and Mansell asked Judge Donald Middlebrooks to instruct the jury that stealing property means wrongfully taking it "with intent to deprive the owner of the use or benefit permanently or temporarily and to convert it to one's own use or the use of another." After the prosecution objected to including a conversion element, Middlebrooks omitted it, although he did tell the jury that the defendants maintained they had "removed property without the bad purpose to disobey or disregard the law and therefore did not act with the intent to steal or purloin." The jurors, whose deliberations lasted longer than it took to present them with the evidence against Moore and Mansell, evidently were troubled by the facts of the case. They sent the judge several notes before telling him they were unable to reach a verdict. Middlebrooks then gave them an Allen charge, encouraging them to continue deliberating and saying they should be open to changing their positions, provided they could do so "without violating your individual judgment and conscience." After sending one more note asking whether they should consider any other defense theories, the jurors found Moore and Mansell guilty of one charge each. Although they each faced up to five years in prison, Middlebrooks instead sentenced them to a year of probation. But Moore and Mansell were saddled with felony convictions that triggered lifelong disabilities, including barriers to employment and loss of their Second Amendment rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld those convictions last September, rejecting Moore and Mansell's objection to the jury instructions. But although the three-judge panel was unanimous in reaching that conclusion, Judge Barbara Lagoa wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Judge Britt Grant, that excoriated Watts-FitzGerald by name for his "imprudent exercise of discretion" in choosing to prosecute Moore and Mansell rather than seeking a civil fine. Lagoa noted that Moore and Mansell had openly stated their motivation in freeing the sharks, had enlisted their customers to help and to take pictures while doing so, had reported the incident to the relevant law enforcement agency, and had "returned the gear to the marina dock as instructed." Yet "for reasons that defy understanding," Lagoa said, Watts-FitzgGerald "learned of these facts and—taking a page out of Inspector Javert's playbook—brought the matter to a grand jury to secure an indictment for a charge that carried up to five years in prison." Despite evidence that "plainly suggests a good-faith mistake on Moore and Mansell's part," Lagoa wrote, Watts-FitzGerald "determined that this case was worth the public expense of a criminal prosecution, and the lifelong yokes of felony convictions, rather than imposition of a civil fine." Explaining that decision during oral argument before the 11th Circuit panel last August, the government's lawyer likened the case to car theft on federal property. "If someone steals a car on a military base," she said, "the proper response isn't, well, pay restitution for that. That's a crime." Grant called that "a silly example," adding, "There's no comparison." In her concurring opinion, Lagoa proposed a different analogy: Suppose "Bob" is walking in a federal park when he encounters a theatrical rehearsal of a fictional crime. Mistaking a man threatening an elderly woman with a prop gun and demanding her purse for an actual robber, Bob comes to her rescue by disarming her apparent assailant. In those circumstances, Lagoa said, it would hardly be just to charge Bob with theft under Section 661, even if his prosecution might hold up according to the letter of the law. Although Trump's intervention corrected Watts-FitzGerald's defiance of fairness and common sense in prosecuting Moore and Mansell, they still had to endure the expense, inconvenience, anxiety, and embarrassment that ordeal involved. But even at that point, Cato Institute legal fellow Mike Fox argues, three venerable but frequently flouted legal principles should have prevented their convictions. "At common law," Fox notes in a Washington Examiner essay published last week, "prosecutors had to prove that the defendant intended to commit a crime. This is known as mens rea. Likewise, courts have historically construed ambiguous criminal statutes in the light most favorable to the defendant. This is known as the rule of lenity. In recent years, legislatures and courts have increasingly dispensed with these constraints, leading to the criminalization of totally innocent conduct and the destruction of the lives of well-meaning individuals such as Moore and Mansell." Trump highlighted the mens rea issue in his recent executive order aimed at restricting federal prosecutions for regulatory crimes. "Many of these regulatory crimes are 'strict liability' offenses, meaning that citizens need not have a guilty mental state to be convicted of a crime," he noted. He instructed prosecutors to focus on cases where the evidence suggests the defendant knowingly broke the law—evidence that was conspicuously missing in the case against Moore and Mansell. Fox mentions another safeguard that could have helped Moore and Mansell, one that he and his Cato colleague Clark Neily highlighted in a brief they filed in support of the diving instructors' appeal. "Perhaps the single greatest bulwark against unjust convictions and punishments at the founding," Fox writes, "was the institution of jury independence," which included "the power to acquit against the evidence." Historically, "jurors played an important role in assessing the wisdom, fairness, and legitimacy of a given prosecution and could acquit a factually guilty defendant if justice demanded." Fox suggests "it is highly doubtful that a jury fully cognizant of its historic powers and duties would have branded John Moore and Tanner Mansell as felons for their misguided attempt to fulfill a civic duty." In fact, he says, "it's unlikely" that Watts-FitzGerald "would have charged Moore and Mansell if he had to try the case" before a jury "apprised of its undisputed power to acquit against the evidence" when justice requires it. But because "modern judges have effectively nullified the power to nullify," Fox observes, "good-hearted people such as Moore and Mansell will continue to feel the system's wrath." Without these safeguards, in other words, such people can avoid the dock only thanks to the prosecutorial discretion that was manifestly misused in this case. And if they are unlucky enough to be targeted by a prosecutor following "Inspector Javert's playbook," their only recourse is the even iffier prospect of a presidential pardon. The post Trump Rightly Pardons 2 Florida Divers Who Became Federal Felons Because of an Honest Mistake appeared first on
