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MIAMI HERALD (Florida) 30 March 06 Squeeze on for wily Burmese pythons: Six months after a string of disturbing encounters -- including a 13-foot python that tried to swallow an alligator -- lawmakers want python owners licensed. (Curtis Morgan)
Biologist Skip Snow has spent the last few years trying to eradicate Burmese pythons that have invaded Everglades National Park.
So he was a bit nervous about releasing four captured snakes back into the park, including one 16-foot monster. ``I didn't get much sleep that night.''
Snow and park managers can snooze more soundly now because the last snake -- each implanted with radio trackers -- was bagged last week after three months of free-range slithering. The snakes not only gave researchers a better grasp of python habits, but the ''Judas animals'' also led them to a dozen more.
The experiment was part of a widening campaign by the park, state lawmakers, wildlife managers and even the pet trade to put the squeeze on the spread of a group of big, bad reptiles in Florida.
On Wednesday, a House committee in Tallahassee approved a bill that would require owners to obtain an annual giant snake license, likely $100 a year, and make releasing them when they get too big a crime with hefty fines and potentially, jail time.
The bill would expand existing regulations for venomous snakes to a handful of exotic escapees, including Burmese, African rock, reticulated and amethystine pythons and monitor lizards.
The prime target, said bill sponsor Rep. Ralph Poppell, a Vero Beach Republican, is the impulse buyer whose little pet can stretch to six feet in a year, twice that size in two.
''It will sort of make people stop and think,'' said Poppell. ``Mom is not as likely to spend 20 bucks on a snake if it has a $100 permit with it.
State wildlife managers, who helped craft the proposal, are already worried about a surge of snake dumping and are setting up the state's first snake amnesty day -- tentatively May 6 in Orlando -- for anyone who might grow uncomfortable with pets capable, potentially, of gulping them whole.
If all goes well, other amnesty days will be offered to accommodate the estimated 5,000 people who possess problematic species.
The stepped-up snake control efforts come six months after a string of disturbing encounters -- including the macabre Everglades case of a 13-foot python that ruptured trying to swallow a six-foot alligator last September. That was followed in short order by swallowings of a turkey, then a house cat in Miami-Dade's suburban outskirts.
Park biologist Snow welcomes attention to a problem he has been watching grow for years. ``It's a long way from where we have been with a laissez-faire attitude.''
Until 2000, only about a dozen snakes were documented in the park. Over the five years since, the number shot to 236 -- with 94 counted last year alone in the park or on its rural fringes, Snow said.
While some snakes were released by irresponsible pet owners, scientists say they are also breeding in the wild.
The presence of the bone-crushing snakes got the public's and media's attention, but the real concern is for native wildlife. The snakes not only compete with them for food, they consume them. Judging by the volume of feathers that Kenneth Krysko, a herpetologist with the Florida Museum of Natural History, is finding in the gut of pythons captured in the Everglades, wading birds are at particular risk.
Perhaps the most important part of the proposed law bankrolls education efforts with a share of permit fees. Controlling snakes already in the wild is a daunting challenge, but any effort is doomed if dumping doesn't stop, scientists say.
The park already has created a ''Don't Let Them Loose'' education program with a CD, stickers and handouts -- all featuring Python Pete, a beagle that park researcher Lori Oberhofer is training to sniff out snakes. An anonymous donor even gave $8,500 to the South Florida National Parks Trust to help pay for the program.
Reptile breeders and pet store operators also have finally come to embrace the need for education, said Bill Brant, owner of The Gourmet Rodent, a large breeder of reptiles and their food in Archer, Fla.
''I think as an industry, we have come to the table too late,'' said Brant, who attended a forum of scientists, breeders, pet store owners, wildlife agencies and others last week in Gainesville to address the issue. ``I don't think we have done a good job of informing the customer of where they are headed with this animal.''
Many breeders were skeptical about the python threat. ''I think it's more of public relations problem than an environmental problem,'' said Brant. But many -- fearing an outright ban -- also back Poppell's bill, though Brant believes making illegal releases a third-degree felony is too harsh.
While lawmakers debate regulating reptiles, researchers are working to develop ways to track and trap creatures that can live in just about any Everglades habitat, wet or dry.
The radio-tracking effort was a major first step, said Snow. Researchers tracked pythons, which are most frequently spotted along roads, moving more than a half-mile into the marsh and using elevated tree islands, which are wildlife havens and often serve as bird rookeries.
The experiment also helped scientists capture a dozen other snakes. Snow said such ''Judas animal'' methods have been used to hunt other animals such as wild pigs. Still, even finding the wily wired snakes was a challenge.
The case of the big guy -- a 16-footer weighing in at just over 150 pounds -- sounds like something out of a Crocodile Hunter episode. Five researchers stood right over it in a watery slough, Snow said, but couldn't spot it in the dark water. Until it moved.
''It bumped somebody and we grabbed onto its tail,'' said Snow. ``It was very interesting.''
Squeeze on for wily Burmese pythons

SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) 02 April 06 Lizards on the loose? Bill offers remedies - Legislator urges photo IDs, costly fees, stiff fines (Stephanie Lambert)
Tallahassee: Making a photo ID for python pets and imposing a $100 annual permit fee for owners are two ways a Vero Beach legislator hopes to fight the unwanted intrusion of invasive reptiles in Florida's natural habitats.
Rep. Ralph Poppell, R-Vero Beach, would also like to raise possible fines to as much as $5,000 for people who knowingly let their non-native pets go into the wild.
"These reptiles have become a very serious problem," Poppell said. "We are trying to raise the bar, because we have lizards, iguanas, pythons and constrictors that feel like they are home."
According to Alan Scott, a park ranger at the Florida Everglades National Park, during the past five years, almost 400 pythons alone have been caught in the park.
Poppell's proposal (HB 1459) is currently in the Agriculture & Environment Appropriations Committee and would expand the current law now used to regulate poisonous snakes.
Some pet store owners, like Ron Dupont, the owner of Wild Cargo and Pet Supplies in West Palm Beach, are particularly worried about the new permit costs.
"It will hurt business tremendously," Dupont said. "If people want to buy a $10 snake or lizard it gets rough having to pay for a $100 permit also. It should be more affordable like $10."
Currently, no permits are needed before purchasing reptiles.
"The public needs to get some common sense and make certain if someone wants to own a reptile, they will be responsible with it," Poppell said. "We are not trying to put people out of business, we are simply trying to make sure there is responsible ownership."
His proposal calls for photographs or even embedded chip IDs as a requirement for snakes.
Poppell said the photo ID would be cheaper, and because the pattern designs on the tops of snakes' heads are different, and never change -- as they grow the patterns grow, similar to fingerprints, it would be a great identity card.
According to Poppell, funding would be minimal, with most of the money coming from registration and fines levied.
His main goal is to educate the public.
"We are going to start a program where we already have officers in the field," Poppell said. "A lot will have to do with in-house training. With the bill, we'll be able to elevate penalties, so it's a matter of the enforcement."
The penalty if the reptile escapes would be a misdemeanor and fine.
If released intentionally, the charge would be third-degree felony with a five-year prison sentence and $5,000 fine.
The bill would offer an amnesty for people to call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and turn their unwanted pets in at no cost.
Doria Gordon, the associate director of conservation of science for the Nature Conservancy, thinks the Poppell bill is a great start for a dramatic impact.
"The bill would allow authorities to have better records of the species and expand authority of this growing problem," Gordon said.
Scott Hardin, the exotic-species coordinator for the FWCC, said there is evidence the Burmese pythons and Nile monitor lizards are breeding in the Everglades.
"There have been over 100 Nile monitor lizards captured in the past three years," Hardin said.
"With the Burmese python, they have a wide-ranging diet. If they continue to expand and intersect with other species, the likelihood is very rare, but they could be a danger to humans as well."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-freptileapr02,0,3594522.story?coll=sfla-news-florida

The penalty if the reptile escapes would be a misdemeanor and fine.
If released intentionally, the charge would be third-degree felony with a five-year prison sentence and $5,000 fine.

If they allow this to pass they are fools, we have soo much room in our prisons that we can put someone away for 5 years for this, and label someone with a misdemeanor and fine cause their cornsnake got out? I think our court systems have enough to deal with. I dont condone the problem but the solution is certainly not realistic, how can you enforce something like that? How can they distinguish Btween escapees and releases? And if they can do that how come they cant find Osama Bin Laden.
call it my need to know...
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Cheers
Lateralis
"I would rather be precisely wrong than approximately right"
Marion "Doc" Ford

Do legislators have photo id's? I would think that would be much more important.
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