Opinion:
Commenter
A bounty system only works if the bounty is low enough to prohibit private breeders from raising snakes to be sold for the bounty. The exotic pet trade brought pythons to Florida & plenty of people still breed them where legal in the U.S.. The bounty has to be a low enough price to keep captive bred snakes from being sold. There is one thing that can rid pythons from the Glades, cold temps. A decade of winters below freezing temps would wipe them out, but that's just not going to happen. Everglades National Park is a natural disaster area & even egrets, herons & ibis are in a permanent decline because nothing can breed where a python can't reach the young. Florida Fish & Wildlife is completely responsible for this disaster by not acknowledging the danger of allowing private ownership of tropical snakes before any of this started. They don't want to admit to the public that eventually every waterway in south florida, including that lovely canal behind your house, will be teeming with pythons.
Florida wildlife officials, opening a new front in the war on invasive snakes, are recruiting the general public for “python patrols” that teach them how to identify and even capture some of the hissing, snapping reptiles.
“We consider (Burmese pythons) established, which means the hope of removing them is pretty slim,” said Jenny Novak, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist, during a recent training session with 20 volunteers in south Florida. “We’re in management mode now.”
