A record number of pythons were removed from the Everglades this year. That’s the good news

Karina Elwood
·2 min read

Contractors from two state agencies have caught a record number of Burmese pythons in Florida this year with direction to combine forces and increase efforts to remove the invasive snakes from the Everglades.

As of mid-October, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the South Florida Water Management District removed about 4,000 snakes — bringing the total snakes removed to 6,278 since the python elimination program was introduced in 2017. In the first eight months of 2020, the agencies removed nearly 2,000 invasive pythons, surpassing 2019 totals.

“That’s also bad news by the way, I just want to point out that there’s that many snakes,” said FWC Executive Director Eric Sutton in a South Florida Water Management District meeting Thursday.

Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis tasked the FWC’s Python Action Team and South Florida Water Management District’s Python Elimination Program to combine efforts to the remove the pythons.

“Governor DeSantis had really taken a strong stance and had really challenged us to increase our efforts with pythons,” Sutton said in the meeting. “The theory is to get the water right. Well, to get the water right you have to make sure the right ecosystem is there.”

Burmese pythons are among the biggest threats to the fragile Everglades ecosystem. The snakes pose threats to small mammals, bird eggs and the overall natural balance of the ecosystem. Scientists don’t know exactly how many live Everglades, but some estimates point to between 100,000 and 300,000 snakes.

The python elimination program was introduced in March 2017 as an aggressive attempt to protect the Everglades and eliminated the invasive species from public lands. The programs contract a limited number of individuals to hunt and the remove the snakes in Miami-Dade, Broward, Collier, Hendry and Palm Beach counties.

Last month, hunters with the program removed a snake that broke the record for the longest Burmese python ever captured in Florida.