More than 20 tons of Burmese python have now been pulled from the wilds of Southwest Florida by one of the region’s most enduring and effective science teams.
In early June, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida announced it had removed more than 6,300 pounds of snakes during the most recent six-month season, pushing the program’s total haul past the 40,000-pound mark since its launch in 2013.
The numbers are astonishing. But they only begin to tell the story.
As Ian Bartoszek, the wildlife biologist who oversees the nonprofit’s python program, is fond of asking “What do you think it took to make 40,000 pounds of Burmese python?”
The answer has been revealed on the snake lab’s black-topped table, where the captured pythons get post-mortem exams, called necropsies. “Most of what we’re looking for is diet, so we look at the gut contents,” says intern-turned-Conservancy-biologist Ian Easterling.
Working with research collaborators at the University of Florida, the scientists have identified prey pieces including deer hooves, alligator scales, bobcat claws. To date, they’ve documented the snakes eating at least 85 species in Florida, including foxes, rabbits, raccoons, birds, reptiles, and wild hogs.
It’s not just the pythons, it’s their eggs
For more than a decade, Bartoszek and his team have stalked these cryptic invaders across some 200 square miles of sawgrass, cypress, and swamp — a stretch of public and private land north of I-75 stretching from Naples deep into the western Everglades. Their method is to surgically implant radio transmitters into male pythons, which they call “scout snakes,” release the scouts back into the wild, then follow them to the females.
The Burmese python — an apex predator that can grow over 18 feet long and eat animals larger than itself — has decimated native wildlife throughout much of South Florida. Its presence is directly linked to plummeting populations of small mammals and birds across vast stretches of the Everglades.
What makes studying them tough, says United States Geological Survey ecologist Jackie Guzy, is that “pythons are incredibly cryptic and secretive, which makes research really challenging.
“We are actively working to fill critical life-history gaps for this species,” says Guzy, who’s worked with the Conservancy team.
“For example, we are looking at what influences their chances of survival across the landscape, and collecting valuable data on reproduction and movement, so we can fine-tune control tools. Obtaining that data is a testament to the hard work done in the field every single day (for years now), by a large group of very talented biologists from many groups, including the USGS. Ultimately these data will help land managers in their efforts to suppress the population.”
During the breeding season, typically from November through April, the scouts lead the scientists directly to reproductive females. Every female removed represents not just one python out of the ecosystem, but potentially hundreds.
Since 2013, the Conservancy’s team has intercepted enough breeding-age females to prevent an estimated 20,000 python eggs from hatching.
‘Quite the rodeo’: Paleo workout meets death by a thousand cuts
The team doesn’t generally drive atop levees or scan ditches from behind vehicle glass. For them, getting to the snakes means going off-grid, scrambling over pitted limestone caprock (sprained ankles waiting to happen) slogging through saw palmetto, smilax and sawgrass (snagged clothes) and crashing through scrub that may hold hornets’ nests or other assorted hazards.
In a video of a capture produced by the nonprofit (“quite a rodeo,” Bartoszek calls it), the scout-tracking team finds a mating group of six pythons. “It’s a bit of organized chaos, as we determine which ones are our scouts and which ones are new pythons that need to be bagged,” Bartoszek says. Eventually, all the females are safely tucked in bags and the scouts set loose to find some more.
In another Conservancy video, Bartoszek demonstrates how to subdue a snake. As the big female raises a coil like a muscled war club, Bartoszek urges intern Jason Edelkind to let a snake fight itself out, before elevating the head, which enervates them.
Bartoszek knows all the steps to the dance, as well as any improv the snake might try, learned through years of hard-won experience. “If I had a video of my first python capture, it’d be the most embarrassing thing ever.”
A couple months before season, he starts prepping with weights and yoga. “It’s basically a paleo workout when you’re out there, so you will very quickly get your(self) in shape out there in the field,” where he’s generally joined by fellow biologist and right-hand man Easterling and a rotating cast of interns.
The aim is to get the unit working smoothly, intuitively, with little need for words. “It takes several months (until) I say ‘That’s textbook,’ or ‘That’s an A-Team moment,’ ” Bartoszek said, but the capture video illustrates just that: a tight unit working as one.
The goal: Fewer and fewer big females
As the program expands and long-term monitoring continues, Bartoszek and his team are seeing encouraging signs, namely fewer big females. “Where we’ve saturated an area with male scout snakes,” Bartoszek says, “these high value targets of females become fewer and fewer and fewer,” which is exactly the goal.
“It’s important to realize that each season the program’s moving (and) we’re getting into new areas. So some scouts are finding more and larger females, but some scouts that have been in the program for a decade may not find a mate. We like those numbers. We like when a scout snake does not locate a female or they are fewer and of a smaller sized class. That indicates that we’re moving in the right direction (with) the goal being local population suppression, because we’re only over 200 square miles.”
Fewer females, fewer eggs, fewer hatchlings mean fewer threats to beleaguered wildlife.
Big picture, says, President and CEO of the Conservancy Rob Moher. “We have a wildlife rehab hospital we also spend a lot of money on … easily a million dollar a year operation … So you think about that, and you think, well, what’s the point of just rehabbing these animals at the Von Arx hospital and releasing them if they’re just getting eaten by a giant snake?”
Pythons can devour prey bigger than themselves
From National Geographic to the New York Times to the Times of India, the Conservancy’s python research and removal program is recognized globally for its rigor and impact.
Some superlatives include the largest female python ever recorded in Florida, an 18-foot, 215-pound snake; the largest male, at 16 feet and 140 pounds and photo documentation of a python eating a white-tailed deer, a meal that helped establish the largest open-mouthed gape size ever recorded for the species – 10.2 inches.
Which helps illustrate how pythons can swallow prey larger than themselves — sometimes more than 100 percent of their own body mass.
Bartoszek’s admiration for these snakes is plain. “They’re remarkable animals (and) we don’t like having to put them down (but) there is no other recourse. We do it humanely.” After necropsies, carcasses are allowed to decompose and return to the earth, he says.
No donors, no python program
How much has the Conservancy’s effort it cost? Moher points out the program has gone from not existing 13 years ago to being the single largest science project at the Conservancy. Supporters have included the Naples Zoo, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Foundation and donors. “The biggest single funding source of this is from donors,” Moher said. “This would not have started, nor could it have been sustained without donors stepping up, saying this is important.”
He estimates its cost at least a quarter-million investment annually that includes insurance, salaries, equipment and more. Over the years, the Conservancy has teamed up with the United States Geological Survey, Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, the University of Florida, and the South Florida Water Management District, and others.
Bartoszek says, “The research element is fairly priceless. The information that’s coming from this study – front lines, never been done before … – it’s hard to put a price on that.”
But there’s much more to do, and over a larger area. “The thousand-foot view here is that maybe this python issue is well beyond one entity, one institution,” he says. “To get after it, it’s very much going to take a village.”
So what can the average person do? “Don’t be afraid of the Burmese python. There’s plenty of other things to be worried about out there in the world,” Bartoszek says. “The Burmese python is not interested in us, but we do need an army of observers here across Florida to report python sightings.” That can be done by calling the invasive species hotline at 888-Ive-Got1 (888-483-4681) or downloading the “IveGot1” mobile app.
Learn more
Information about the Conservancy’s ongoing python work is available at conservancy.org
This article originally appeared on Marco Eagle: Pythons in the Everglades: Team works to remove invasive species killing wildlife
Reporting by Amy Bennett Williams, Naples Daily News / Marco Eagle
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
