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By BILL KEARNEY
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- Burmese pythons are too good at what they do -- they're nearly undetectable to both humans and their prey, they barely need to move and when they do they're deadly. On top of that, they have lots of babies.
As a result, according to an ambitious new paper produced by the U.S. Geological Survey, their population has exploded in only 20 years from a few snakes at the southern tip of Everglades National Park to an invasion that envelops the southern third of Florida.
The reptile's "invasion front" has recently rolled through Broward and Palm Beach counties and is moving up the state. The current front encompasses the southern end of Lake Okeechobee and is pushing westward north of Fort Myers.
The study, which meticulously synthesizes several decades' worth of findings from more than 250 research initiatives, assesses where we stand in the python invasion and how we might slow it. The success of these snakes, which are native to Southeast Asia, and came here via the exotic pet trade, has been a cataclysmic failure for South Florida ecosystems and "represent one of the most intractable invasive-species management issues across the globe," said the paper. To put it simply, the snakes are very much on the move, butting up against civilization and heading north -- how far it will go depends on several factors, including climate change.
History of an invasion
In the 1970s, Burmese pythons, which are admittedly beautiful, dappled in a rich pattern of mahogany, coffee and taupe, became all the rage in the exotic pet trade. Snakes from Thailand and Myanmar began showing up more and more in the States, including South Florida.
By the end of the decade, there was evidence that some of the snakes were living in Everglades National Park. In 1979, a python measuring more than 12 feet was run over on Tamiami Trail, and there was a spate of unconfirmed sightings in the southwest section of the park through the 1980s.
It wasn't until 1995, though, that biologists officially documented and collected two snakes -- a 7-foot adult and, tellingly, a hatchling -- near West Lake at the southern tip of the peninsula.
In the following years, park staff began finding the invasive snakes farther and farther north in the park. "Together, these observations suggest that multiple generations of Burmese pythons were present in ENP by 2000 or earlier and that the population occupied a large geographic area," writes the USGS's Jackie Guzy, author of the report. That year, wildlife officials deemed them to be established and reproducing. Since then the snakes have expanded steadily up the peninsula, with genetic analysis suggesting that a second introduction of snakes with slightly different patterns on their skin occurred to the west, near Naples.
Little did biologists know at the time the massive impact the invaders would have on native animals, and how futile control efforts would be.
How to slow the invasion
"Over the past two decades we have extensively explored methods to capture and remove pythons. But so far, there are no easy solutions," Guzy said. "The more tools we have at our disposal, the better."
Those tools currently include the state's Python Challenge, an annual 10-day event where hunters cruise backroads and canal and slog through swaps to catch and euthanize as many snakes as they can. Last year's Challenge totaled 231 dead snakes.
Some hunters used trained dogs to sniff the snakes out, and biologists have implanted tracking devices in certain snakes and followed them to breeding aggregations, where they can snag several in a small area.
Another nascent but promising concept is to put tracking collars on prey such as possums and racoons. Snakes are so ubiquitous that the mammals are eventually eaten, usually by a larger snake.
The collar stays in the snake's digestive tract for some time, and biologists can track the collar to the snake. This method recently led researchers to two massive female pythons full of egg follicles in Key Largo. The snakes were humanely euthanized.
There is hope that with cheaper collars and drone technology, this prey-tracking method could put a real dent in the snake's populations, particularly because it leads to larger snakes, which are often female.