NPS website for the Everglades

From my understanding, these numbers include animals that were found dead, and then removed. Right now, they're averaging about one per day. If we are to believe Senator Nelson's ASTRONOMICAL claims of over 150,000 of these animals, it would take 410 years to remove them all if there was a way to keep their population from growing and we kept at the one per day pace. Now THAT'S some serious federal funding!

The other way to achieve the goal in less time would be to beef up the number of people doing the trapping. We have 30 volunteers plus the staff, so let's estimate around, what, 40 people or so...? Let's assume the population is about 30,000 just for the sake of example (it's closer to the low side of the estimates of 5,000-150,000 ). At the rate of one snake per day spread over 40 people, we'll need almost 3,300 volunteers and staff to eliminate the Burmese python problem in one year.

So, there are two options. Does either sound realistic? I think not. Burms are there to stay if the numbers are high.

Now, if the numbers were closer to 5,000 or 10,000, and the cold killed half, we're now looking at 2,500-5,000. If we're going to ACTUALLY make a dent in the population, this year needs to be the year we do it. The "strike while the iron's hot" mentality.

At 5,000 burms left, we'd need approximately 550 volunteers and staff to wipe them out (if we maintained the current collection rate and it remained steady until they were all gone - which is unrealistic but this is just an example).

So, if the populations really are as low as some estimate, and the cold really did wipe out half, there is a somewhat reasonable chance that SOMETHING could be done to REALLY impact the population of these burms in the ENP. We just need a LOT of people to do it. And we need to do it now.

Another tangent here...

I've heard that many of the burms being found alive seem to be in good health and not suffering from respiratory disease. Can anyone here confirm this? Tom? Mike? Greg? It makes sense to me because my guess is respiratory infections are likely the result of an overabundance of bacteria in the air and cage in captivity. Something that wild populations don't deal with. Plus, even if temps drop down to 40 degrees in the wild at night in the ENP, when the sun comes out, the surface temperature of a rock will probably reach close to 100 or possibly even higher during the day. This is not an extreme that we allow for in captivity. So, our results in captivity do not always translate to the wild.

To illustrate this, I took my temp gun out today and measured the surface temperature of my yard, in the sun. It was 96.5 degrees. The Weather Channel said it was 64 degrees at the time. Something to remember, temperatures reported by weather agencies are ALWAYS taken in the shade, a couple of feet off the ground.

Just some thoughts for the day Toss in some of yours too!

jb
-----
What's written above is purely my opinion. In fact, MOST of what you read on the internet is someone's opinion. Don't take it too seriously

Jonathan Brady
DeviantConstrictors.com
Deviant Constrictors picturetrail

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Show Entire Thread ]