Pythons in the Florida Everglades don’t look like they’re going anywhere anytime soon, which means the annual hunts to get rid of the invasive species is here until the problem is solved.
The Everglades National Park will now allow state-contracted python hunters onto its federal lands to find and kill the invasive Burmese python. Despite efforts to remove pythons from the area for years, the snakes are ravaging the park’s wildlife populations.
This is an unprecedented move considering decades of resistance by the national park. Hunting is prohibited in the Everglades. In the past, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) had been refused when trying to include the park in it’s state-authorized efforts to hunt pythons using hired, contracted hunters.
Pedro Ramos, superintendent of Everglades National Park, told the Sun Sentinel in their coverage of the decision, “we’ve gotten to the point where we’ve realized that this is a significant problem that requires us to be open-minded and flexible in the way that we approach it.”
