“He said he wanted to put 25 outdoorsmen with guns out in the field,” recalls Mike Kirkland, an invasive animal biologist who was charged with assembling the original team.ĭamage done by the pythons to south Florida ecosystems has become so acute in recent years that the quest to stop has turned into a collective crusade. This viral video led the executive director of the South Florida water management district, who was horrified by what he saw, to create the district’s own Python Elimination Program, in 2017. In December 2016, a YouTube video showed a Burmese python in Big Cypress national preserve, next to the Everglades, strangling an alligator. A 2012 study in the Everglades suggested that a disturbing number of mammals have been swallowed by the invasive species: a spike in python sightings since 2000 coincided with a more than 90% reduction in raccoons, opossums and rabbits.īut it’s not just the smaller, soft animals who have been attacked. It’s estimated that there are tens of thousands of pythons now living in the Florida wild. One was recently discovered coiled up on a floating crab pot more than 15 miles out to sea. Masters of camouflage, they can slide by an eagle-eyed biologist in just a few inches of water, and they can cover huge distances. They can inflict a nasty wound on humans – when Van Gorder was bitten, it took five months for one of the broken teeth to work its way out – but the chances of anything more serious happening are slim (though not impossible). Able to grow to more than 20ft in length, these stealthy invaders ambush their prey, squeeze until the prey stops breathing and then split their jaw apart to take the prey whole. They do, however, have an uncanny ability to swallow things significantly larger than their own heads. “My heart stopped,” Van Gorder recalls, though now the size seems, to both of them, almost quaint.īurmese pythons have no natural predators here. Determined, they acquired another permit (no longer required for 22 FWC-managed areas as of 2017, when the commission declared open season on pythons) and kept looking for another two months, until they came across an eight-footer. “We usually achieve our goals,” Koehler says, still disappointed by their efforts in the challenge. Those who had caught the most and also the longest pythons shared in over $16,000 of prizes. Photograph: Charles Ommanney/Getty ImagesĪfter 80 hours of trudging through cypress forests and freshwater marshland, Koehler and Van Gorder did not catch a single snake, but fellow participants removed 106 pythons. “They bring one in a bag and they drop it on the ground, and they say: ‘Catch it!’” says Van Gorder, adding that this is where they learned the safest way to grab a snake is by its head. Then they attended a live-capture tutorial, also offered by the FWC. The couple registered and were issued a permit to hunt in designated areas of south Florida. (The first was held in 2013 there have been none since.) A month-long public hunt held on a vast expanse of state forests and other government-owned land north of Everglades national park, the challenge was designed to cull numbers while also raising public awareness about a growing ecological problem. Koehler and Van Gorder’s love affair with Burmese pythons began in 2016, when the FWC held its second python challenge. The other four days the couple are usually out chasing pythons as members of Patric: the Python Action Team – Removing Invasive Constrictors, which is managed by the Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (FWC). Three days a week, Koehler runs Hair of the Dog with her partner of 31 years, Peggy van Gorder. “Peggy’s been bit once, but really, we’re very careful.” “I have never been bit,” she proudly adds.
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