Python hunter and Naples native Taylor Stanberry won the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s annual Python Challenge last July, catching a total of 60 pythons during the 10-day competition.
A total of 294 pythons were removed by the more than 900 participants from around the country and Canada during the competition.
With the win, Stanbery not only received the $10,000 prize, which she funneled back into her wildlife conservation efforts at The Wild Stanberry Sanctuary, but she also made history by becoming the first woman to win the challenge since its inception in 2013.
Her work with pythons didn’t stop at the end of the challenge, though. As a professional python hunter for the last seven years, she goes out for contracted hunts for the FWC with her husband, Rhett Stanberry, year-round, catching a few hundred pythons every year.
“I really just did the same thing I always do,” she said about her approach going into the 2025 challenge. “Prepare to stay out late, prepare for long hours, buggy nights and just keep searching in different areas, and just stay committed to it.”
Stanberry’s longest python she caught during the 2025 challenge was almost 10 feet long.
Stanberry said isn’t completely set on defending her title in this year’s competition from July 10 to 19 because she doesn’t want to deal with the added pressure.
However, she urged people who are entering the competition, or just getting into the python hunting field, to do it safely and for the purpose of conservation.
“Don’t be fighting everyone and getting crazy,” she said. “Just do it for the right reasons, and look for pythons and try to remove them from the ecosystem.”
Even if she doesn’t enter the competition, she will still have plenty of work to do documenting her conservation work for her almost 80,000 Instagram followers.
What is the purpose of the challenge?
Burmese pythons, capable of growing to 19 feet long, are an invasive species from South Asia, which were introduced to Florida through the exotic pet trade in the 1970s.
Some owners released them into the wild when they got too big, creating a crisis exacerbated by the destruction of a breeding facility during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The population grew big enough in the Everglades in the following years that they were listed as an invasive species by the mid-2000s.
The pythons thrive in the Everglades environment with no natural predators, breed quickly and prey on native species, posing serious risks for the area’s native wildlife.
“They are just pounding back food,” Stanberry said. “They’re eating rats or eating birds, once they’re older, alligators, you name it, they eat a lot of things, so removing them helps the native animals.”
The state government started offering incentives and rewards in subsequent years for catching and humanely killing them. The FWC saw a significant upturn in python mitigation efforts after it started putting on the competition nine years ago. More than 23,000 pythons have been removed from Florida since 2000, but that only represents a small portion of the total population present in Florida.
Even though the snakes pose a severe threat to the native wildlife, Stanberry said they still need to be treated humanely.
“Treat the pythons with respect, because they didn’t choose to be here,” she said. “Just love the actual Florida wildlife, enjoy going out just to see the bobcats and whatnot because that’s the whole reason we’re doing this.”
You can reach Naples Daily News reporter Alexa Ryan by emailing Alexa.Ryan@naplesnews.com.
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This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Meet the 2025 Florida Python Challenge champion: Taylor Stanberry
Reporting by Alexa Ryan, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Naples Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Alexa Ryan, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News | USA TODAY Network
