A1A South

EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK — The 8-foot Burmese python hissed and flapped its mouth open, apparently wanting to clamp onto one of the nearby humans who surely was bothering the powerful snake by crowding around it, one a photographer just a few inches away.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., warned everyone about the worst-case scenario, a python killing a small child. And pythons threaten the endangered Florida panther and the rest of the Everglades ecosystem, where the state and federal governments have spent nearly $11 billion trying to restore the polluted wetlands.

“It’s an accident waiting to happen,” Nelson said Wednesday, standing next to a biologist holding the snake.

Those billions of dollars and that snake — captured Tuesday, leaving thousands slithering in the wild throughout the state — were the reason that Nelson stopped at the Shark Valley Visitor Center in northwest Miami-Dade County, where the Miccosukee Indians make their home, and the rest of civilization seems a million miles away.

Nelson is a staunch supporter of restoring the Everglades, which gets about 1 million visitors a year, and he wants the federal government to put the python on its injurious species list, a designation that would make most breeding and importing of the snake illegal and help prevent it from damaging the national ecosystem.

Pythons cost taxpayers up to $150,000 a year to monitor and control and are part of an invasive species list that has an annual economic impact of $100 billion, according to the National Invasive Species Council, which is part of President Bush’s Cabinet.

“You would be amazed at where pythons can live,” Nelson said. A possible habitat “map goes all the way through the Sun Belt, to California, and up to Sacramento.”

He is fighting to get Congress to appropriate $370 million for restoration this year. Completing the project will cost at least another $19 billion and take another four decades to complete, according to the country’s Government Accountability Office.

The Everglades suffer from neglect after years of growth in Southwest Florida. Car oil, fertilizers and other pollutants have spilled into the Everglades on the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Earlier in the day, Nelson was in the Picayune Strand, about 40 miles west, stumping for restoration.

That includes removing pythons, which came to the U.S. from Southeast Asia.
They first were discovered in the Everglades in the mid-1990s, said Skip Snow, a biologist at the park. And they became famous — or infamous — after a couple of incidents. One involved an alligator carrying a python in its mouth while part of the snake was wrapped around the gator. It was a 30-hour battle. The other was the photo seen in media around the world, of the python that burst open after trying to digest a gator.

Last year, a 9-foot Burmese python was trapped at the Beach Club Apartments on Winkler Avenue Extension in Fort Myers.

“Part of the problem is we don’t give it any forethought if we should bring the snakes into the country, if we should let them out,” said Skip Snow, a biologist at the park.

Adding the python to the injurious species list would make its import into the country or transport over state lines illegal, except for cases of medical research, zoos or exhibits, Snow said.

That’s going to take at least two years, said Paul Souza, a South Florida field supervisor with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

A risk assessment is under way and Souza expects completion of that report in December. Then comes a cost assessment. But the snake is competing with other candidates being petitioned for the injurious species list. A backlog of work has prevented the assessment to be completed on the animal.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife has “just a couple of personnel to go through that list,” Nelson said.

Souza said they understand the urgency.

“We’re ahead of the curve, ahead of more than 90 percent of other species,” he said. “But we need to act now.”

Nearly 300 pythons have been documented in the Everglades area. Either park employees caught them, or alligators and cars killed them, Snow said.

The biggest python ever caught at the park was 16 feet, and the biggest one Snow has caught was 15 1⁄2 feet.

Catching one takes at least a two people, Snow said. One person distracts the snake by touching its tail, while one or two others try to pin the python’s head to the ground, maybe with a branch.

“You want to make sure you can control the first fifth of the body,” Snow said. “Burmese pythons aren’t predators on people, but they can kill people.”

Nelson smiled.

“I’ve done a lot of things as a senator but I am not going to let this thing wrap around me,” he said.  Source:  News-Press.com

I rarely to never agree with Bill Nelson about anything, so this may be a first.  We need to get rid of these imported menaces now.