Below is a direct quote from one of the biologist working in the glades. This response was to my mentioning that a published article said that there was an estimated 10,000 to 150,000 pythons in the glades.



I thought a better answer would have been to simply say......"We're guessing."





" The population estimates are broad because they can't be done the way people do them most of the time using mark/recapture techniques since we obviously don't want to release pythons back into the glades after we catch them. The numbers being thrown around use known densities from a few areas and then project them over the acreage of the glades. I'm not directly associated with those population estimates so I'm not sure of the details beyond that but I do know that nobody is claiming to have an exact number because the confidence in that method can't be as high as one would like... hence the range of values rather than the exact number."





Ernie Eison

WESTWOOD ACRES REPTILE FARM INC.

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