Invasion, Proliferation, Hunt–A New Paradigm

Bill Booth with one of the Burmese pythons that are wreaking havoc upon the Everglades’ fragile ecosystem. Photograph: Roger Booth

We have been paying attention to this issue for some years now, and never tire of coming back to the topic of ending exotic pet trade, or to stopping invasive species, or however you want to frame it. Few of those invasion/proliferation stories have happy endings though some seem to have creative solutions in process. Thanks to Richard Luscombe, reporting from Miami, for the Guardian’s coverage of this year’s hunt, which looks to be every bit as good as last year’s:

Bill Booth struggles to recall the last time he saw a raccoon, a fox or a rabbit on one of his frequent hunting excursions deep into the swamps of the Florida Everglades. An outdoorsman all his life, he knows as well as anyone how the native wildlife once abundant across the vast wilderness has been all but wiped out by an invasion of a deadly species he is trying his hardest to remove: the Burmese python.

By some estimates, up to 150,000 of the unwelcome intruders are swimming through the state’s 1.5m acres (600,000 hectares) of waterways, reproducing uncontrollably and consuming almost every living creature in their path, sometimes taking on even the previously undisputed king of the Everglades, the American alligator.

It’s a growing problem that has led wildlife officials to conceive ever-more colourful attempts to try to eradicate, or at least contain, the giant snakes. With varying success, efforts have included training dedicated sniffer dogs, bringing in snake hunters from India’s mountain-dwelling Irula tribe, and, most recently, advertising for minimum-wage civilian python-catchers on a two-month contract for a hunt beginning in April.

Bill Booth and a beautiful, if enormous, python. Photograph: Bill Booth

Booth, who takes his small crew on regular hunts into the most remote parts of the ecologically fragile wetlands, is at the forefront of another initiative. The Miami-born firefighter and his fellow “Cypress Boys” are the current champions of the Python Challenge, a month-long hunt devised by the Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (FWC) in which members of the public are encouraged to venture into the Everglades, tracking and capturing as many snakes as they can…

Read the whole story here.