Personally I don't think ANY amount of collecting, trapping, paying bounties, etc will work or even make a dent in the population concerning the size of the Everglades Wilderness Area. Kevin Enge sent me pics of one snake caught by fishermen near the Shark River in extreme SW Florida. This entire area including the ENP, Big Cypress National Preserve, The Fakahatchee State Preserve, Picayune Strand State Forest, Florida Panther National Wildlife Reserve, etc are several thousand square miles in size of very hostile terrain with few roads. Are those numbers you quoted the TOTAL amount collected since the realization they were here? I do know that the last time I checked the liscened Python Hunters collectively have caught less than a hundred. You can be standing almost on the snakes and not see them. The freeze I'm reasonbly sure killed more snakes than all collectors have put together. I believe they are here to stay and also do not believe that they are anywhere close to the problem they are portrayed to be in nature. This whole thing is blown out of proportion and development is by far the biggest problem Florida faces along with the lack of quality water, mercury contamination, etc. I also do not believe that there are hundreds of thousands of snakes here as some people claim but they were fairly common.
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

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