>>I bet rock pythons have been established for at least 5 years and nobody was really finding them.
>>
>>I still don't know why you guys keep arguing that it's the hurricane's fault. It's the fault of the person who owned the snakes and didn't secure them prior to the hurricane (if the hurricane did play a part in their establishment).
>>
>>Let's be adults here.
>>
>>Also, some colleagues and I will be publishing a paper listing an ever-growing number of exotics found in the wild in FL... not necessarily breeding, but found. Are these ALL from the hurricane? No way. I have literally watched these things crawl out of walls.
>>
>>Let's get past this pointless debate about the hurricane vs. release hypothesis and start thinking of ways to fix this problem. I suggest a little peer pressure... especially toward one flamingly obvious source of escaped exotic herps.
>>
>>Mike

"Let's be adults here"?? Are you kidding? What you are saying is the type of argument my 10 year old would make. Your entire argument rests upon the assumption that there is in fact a huge problem with the burms being in the Everglades. You haven't even come close to proving that. And singling out the pet trade is laughable. Cane toads, Asian Carp, kudzu (and I'm sure there are many other examples) were not introduced by the pet trade, but by PhD scientists. You can talk all you want, but how about offering some evidence that you and your colleagues have any type of track record dealing with what you deem invasive/harmful species? How's the Brown Tree snake eradication going? I wonder if the rats on Rat Island are all dead after the biologists poisoned them (along with over 3 dozen endangered bald eagles.)

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/06/15/

Down in Puerto Rico, supposedly a big source of the feral Boa constrictor population was a serpentarium that was vandalized. Should we blame serpentariums/zoo's since this one wasn't prepared well enough for a break-in?

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