3 days ago
How many pythons could you catch in ten days?
ALL AROUND the world conservationists are killing animals. To preserve red squirrels in Britain an army of volunteers shoot grey ones with air rifles. In the Caribbean fishermen are encouraged to catch and eat the lionfish that are destroying the coral reefs, despite their venomous barbs. Western Australia's government has set up 'felixer grooming traps' that spray feral cats with toxic gels that they instinctively lick off.
In the Florida Everglades, the Burmese python is the ecosystem's enemy. Initially introduced to the Sunshine State as exotic pets, the snakes grew too big to be good housemates and were released (or escaped) into the state park. There they feasted on native wildlife and bred rapidly. Today pythons are responsible for a 95% drop in the number of furry animals in the Everglades. No local species is immune: the snakes, which can grow up to nearly 20 feet long, are known to strangle alligators and swallow them whole. Without a natural predator to speak of, the Florida man has stepped in.
For ten days in July the state hosts the Python ChallengeTM, an annual open competition aimed at culling snakes. This year over 900 people descended on the swamps, battling to take home $25,000 in prize money. Most were Floridians; many were military men. The pursuit takes place in the dead of night when the snakes leave their nests to forage. Hopeful hunters sit atop slow-moving pickup trucks and shine flashlights into the grasses to scan for slithers. When they spot a snake they wrestle it with their bare hands. At the end of the night the snakes are killed, their brains scrambled with a metal rod to ensure they don't regain consciousness. 'It's like war: hours of sheer boredom punctuated by seconds of exhilaration,' says an ex-marine training to do it professionally.
Ronald Kiger, a bearded chap from central Florida, clinched the grand prize last year with a bounty of 20 pythons. The longest snake, caught by another amateur, was nearly ten feet. This year's winners have yet to be announced. The challenge does not represent a 'bloodlust for pythons', says Michael Kirkland who works for the state. It is instead a publicity stunt for Florida's conservation project. The python elimination programme, managed jointly by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the South Florida Water Management District, employs 100 year-round contractors. Since 2017 they have removed 16,000 snakes from the Everglades.
Contractors are paid $50 for the first four feet of a snake and $25 for every foot after that. Some choose to sell the carcasses to companies that make the skins into handbags and the vertebrae into jewelry. (They are working on making the meat into dog food.) Dusty Crum, a self-described 'python wild-man', sells python-fat soap out of his pizza parlour on the edge of the park. For many of the hunters the job is about far more than money. Kristine Bartish, a biologist employed by the state who hunts pythons five nights a week, says the mission itself becomes addictive: going out to remove snakes for a good cause is 'like an Easter egg hunt for adults'.
