Everglades python deaths fuel debate over snake-control plans
Their high death toll in the Everglades from cold weather is fueling a debate over how to control the threat of the Burmese python.

BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com

Winter walloped the Burmese python, but not enough to wipe out the most infamous invader of the Everglades, scientists and wildlife managers told a congressional panel assessing efforts to control the exotic snakes.

The Tuesday hearing put some of the first hard numbers on the staggering death toll from a historic cold snap -- nine of 10 pythons equipped with radio tracers in Everglades National Park died, according to one yet-to-be published study.

It also cranked up the heat on a simmering battle over a controversial federal proposal to ban the interstate sale and import of large constrictors. Breeders contend the measure would destroy a $1 billion industry and thousands of jobs.

Shawn Heflick, a conservation biologist from Palm Bay and science advisor to a trade group called the U.S. Association of Reptile Keepers, said a cold-weather toll he estimated at 70 to 80 percent proved that federal risk assessments suggesting the snake could spread to other states were overblown.

``This population of pythons cannot expand outside of Florida,'' he said. ``This is a Florida problem, not a federal problem.''

At least there was no dispute about the Florida part.

Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife ecologist who led an assessment of cold effects on pythons in the Everglades, said enough survived to ensure the Burmese wasn't going to disappear from the comfy, subtropical confines of South Florida -- despite cold snaps and intensive eradication efforts.

Nine of the 10 radio-tagged snakes died, including all eight females, but field surveys for several weeks following the cold snap found higher survival rates -- nearly 60 percent of 99 snakes spotted by Mazzotti's team of researchers were alive.

With his study pending publication in an academic journal, Mazzotti -- reached after the hearing -- said he could not discuss the findings in detail, but said it was clear the cold had seriously knocked back a population of big snakes conservatively estimated in the thousands.

MANY DEAD

``What we can say is that a lot of pythons died and there are way less out there now,'' he said.

Without expanded efforts to control them, he said, the snakes are likely to rebound in coming years. Only last week, his researchers documented a rare sighting showing that some of the survivors are well enough to engage in the propagation business.

On a tree island a mile from the Pahayokee boardwalk, Mike Rochford and two other team members discovered a 15-foot-plus female, one of the largest captured in the park, and three males entwined in a pulsing ``mating ball.'' The biological details are best left at, ``What happens in Pahayokee, stays in Pahayokee.''

Beyond South Florida, however, the cold kill has given critics of a federal crackdown on the reptile breeding trade plenty of ammunition.

They argue it exposed flaws in a risk assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey suggesting that the Burmese python, and several others, could potentially spread into other southern and Southwestern states.

Heflick, an advocate for domestic breeders, warned that banning interstate sales was overkill that could worsen the problem. Owners of colorful varieties, some worth thousands of dollars, would suddenly have worthless snakes, he said.

``Alarmingly, many of the millions of now legal snakes could be released in retaliation or in anger and a sense of betrayal from the government,'' he said.

HUNTERS URGED

Jorge P. Gutierrez Jr., a Miami attorney and airboater, urged the panel to open Everglades National Park to hunters, who he said could help control the snake.

Mazzotti and other scientists, as well as federal parks and wildlife managers, warned it is premature to use one cold snap to dismiss the threat of the Burmese and other constrictors that the U.S. Department of Interior is proposing to add to a federal blacklist of ``injurious'' species.

Phyllis Windle, a senior invasive species scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the country needs to overhaul its entire system for dealing with the python and other invasive species, which she called the ``least recognized and most poorly addressed environmental threat of our time.'

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/23/1544261/glades-python-deaths-fuel-debate.html#ixzz0joex9PIZ
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