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Tuesday, January 15 2013

Report from the Florida python hunt

By kingsnake.com
Tue, January 15 2013 at 16:42

The Florida python hunt is shaping up to be just as cruel and pointless as any opponent could have predicted. From the Huffington Post:

The state of Florida this weekend unleashed a thrill-seeking public on the Burmese python, an invasive species that has set up house in the Florida Everglades and surrounding wildlife management areas over the past decade or so.

[...]

Based on results from the first weekend, a lot more people might need to sign up to appreciably diminish a python population estimated in the tens of thousands.

By 4 p.m. today, hunters had turned in a total of 11 dead snakes to the wildlife commission.

"I didn't see any snakes, much less Burmese pythons," Mark Reynolds of Seffner said this morning. "I saw plenty of alligators and birds and fish, but not a single snake of any kind."

[...]

The "harvesting" of snakes means killing them, and there are by-the-book ways to do that -- mostly a bullet into the top of the head.

Decapitating the squirming beast is not really recommended, because, biologists say, the brain of a python remains active for hours even after it is separated from the rest of the body and experiences excruciating pain during that time.

Read the full article here.

Photo: Huffington Post

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I think this is horrible! Pythons in the everglades have been grossly over inflated and no one seems to realize what 1000 jackasses are going to do with the already fragile ecosystem as they go tramping threw the swamps looking for that cash. No one seems to care that it is acceptable to kill these animals by any means they choose, like drilling threw there heads. This is NOT an acceptable form of a humane death. And how many of those jerks will be bring in snakes from outside just to collect that bounty??? you sure couldn't get $5000 for them any other way so why not sacrifice them for a buck.

#1 Terrie Thompson on 2013-01-15 17:40

The 'Glades' python hunt is frightening;appearances suggest any snake with a pattern will be slaughtered!

#2 Wayne Fowlie on 2013-01-16 14:50

I live in south west Florida & am sickend by the actions of our paid for PETA Govener has taken towards the Pythons. It reminds me a lot of any other animal scare that has come out. Sharks, Aliigators, Alligator Gars, Snakehead Fish, Rattlesnakes, & so on. It's this simple, my great state of Florida is absolutly covered in invasive speices. Thats right COVERED! The majority of the PLANT life here is from somewhere else but no one cares, the fresh water FISH are a mix of speices from other places but no one cares, pet BIRDS let loose that have taken up residence here but no one cares, we have insect life from god knows where but no one cares, well at least they admit that nothing can be done about it. There is also the wild pigs that someone introduced a long time ago that have taken over but no one cares. The Cuban Tree Frog and Cuban Brown Anole have damn near run the native Florida Green Tree Frog and Florida Green Anole out of town but no one cares. But my favorite of all is the ferrel Cat & Dog population that is out of control here and hate to break the news to people but cats & dogs have killed more people in single year then the entire time frame in which large snakes have been kept in the United States and the population of these adorable animals is out of control, but no one cares. For example the shelter by my house which takes in strays has over 500! Cats. It is a large facility & I agree with no kill shelters but why is it that now that the pythons have become a proublem that we have turned into heartless killers finding it ok to kill one animal cruely and not another. I always ask this one simple question to people who find it ok to kill something like a snake with what ever they can find. "Would you kill a stray dog in your yard with a shovel? or would you call Animal Control?"

#3 Sgt Breen USMC on 2013-01-17 04:57

I see HuffPo did their normal anti-anything piece on what should be a enviro-rag's dream. They should be glorifying the cleaning up of the Everglades. Of course they do not.

Personally, I see no difference between a bullet in the head of either a feral burmese python, a feral dog or a feral cat. I look at it as a bullet well used.

If the goal is to clean up the environment, then let's clean up the environment, but let's not try to have it both ways. One cannot complain about "invasive species" and then complain about one being removed from the environment.

#4 Secular Absolutist on 2013-01-17 17:08

Let me begin by saying that I believe the python problem is grossly overinflated by hype--I will buy that the snakes are a significant problem in a very restricted region, but that does not translate to "OMG, they'll learn to hibernate and spread to Minnesota in 10 years!" Nor is it the pythons' fault that they're there at all, and as a snake person it makes me sad to see them paying the price for human screw-ups. (Hurricane Andrew is only to blame up to a point: the snakes would not have been in a position for the hurricane to release them if the demand for them as pets hadn't brought them to Florida in the first place.) And as has been rightly pointed out, a real problem with bounty systems is that it encourages fraud. Back when there was a bounty on wolves, for instance, a skillful trapper could stretch the scalp and ears of a coyote or even a dog to make them larger and more wolfish-looking and collect the payment.

At the same time, the inarguable fact is that these snakes DO NOT BELONG in the Everglades. Unlike a feral cat, it's hard to confuse a feral Burmese python with a free-roaming pet (personally I think allowing your cat to roam is asking for an injured or dead cat, but that's just me)and morally I see no difference in killing a feral python, a wild hog, or a handful of pigeons.

I do, however, agree with Sgt. Breen--to be consistent, let's go after some other invasives. Florida's introduced monkeys, for instance. The mongooses in Hawaii. Feral dog packs in the South. And my favorites--mute swans, the most vicious and destructive waterfowl ever mistakenly introduced to an unsuspecting continent. Oh, whoops! Those animals all appear on greeting cards and in cute stories, we can't!

#5 JS Argyle on 2013-01-18 09:23

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Tuesday, January 15 2013

Report from the Florida python hunt

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