NAPLES, Fla. “It’s a good night for a python hunt.”
The air is thick and soupy. Pythons appear to love stormy, humid air, says skilled hunter Amy Siewe, and Hurricane Idalia is about to make landfall in Florida.
In about 9 hours over two nights, Siewe catches, and kills, 4 Burmese python hatchlings. She spots them from atop a so-called snake deck—a platform drilled into the mattress of her white Ford truck affixed with floodlights. We cruise down highways 29 and 41 in Naples, driving no quicker than 25 miles per hour as she seems to be for snakes within the grass.
A blonde with a shiny smile, Siewe, 46, left behind a thriving actual property business in Indiana in 2019. On a trip to Florida earlier that 12 months, she’d gone on a python hunt and was hooked. “This is what I’m supposed to be doing,” she says. She used to work for the state python-hunting program, but it surely didn’t pay sufficient to stay on. Now, she leads small teams of two to 4 folks on guided hunts for $1,800 an evening, educating civilians easy methods to kill the invasive reptile, which has taken maintain all through a lot of Florida.
Siewe preps me on what to search for: the snakes are largely immobile, and their eyes don’t shine within the mild, however their pores and skin has a plastic sheen. Our finest wager is to come back throughout one which’s periscoping, or holding its head excessive. Siewe exhibits me a photograph on her cellphone of a python she’d discovered lately. On the display, the snake is circled in yellow, however I nonetheless have bother recognizing it.
“Python!” she shouts. Dave Roberts, her accomplice each in life and snake-catching, slams on the brakes and he or she jumps out. Twisting and squirming, the hatchling struggles in her grasp, its jaws large open. She holds the snake simply behind its head so it may possibly’t chew her.
About two ft in size, these hatchlings are nothing in comparison with the 19-footer she helped catch final 12 months, however she counts this as a victory. It takes a python about 200 prey animals and three years to succeed in 10 ft in size, Siewe estimates. “Every [python] that we’re taking out is making a difference.” (Read concerning the largest-ever python present in Florida.)
I movie the catch with my iPhone digicam, however when it’s time to kill the python, Siewe has me flip it off—this half’s not for present. “It’s really unfortunate what we have to do to these pythons,” she says. She’s liked snakes her entire life and has “great respect” for them, she says.
“Unfortunately, there’s no option.” Normally she and Roberts use a bolt gun to kill the pythons they catch, however as a result of this one’s so small, Dave makes use of a pellet gun whereas she holds the snake regular. The wriggling tail immediately goes nonetheless.
It’s no secret that Florida has a python downside. Since not less than 1979, Burmese pythons have slithered over the southern tip of Florida, together with Everglades National Park, progressively increasing their vary to almost a 3rd of the state. The species, native to southeastern Asia, arrived in Florida seemingly someday mid-century by way of the unique pet commerce. It’s now unlawful to accumulate one as a pet in Florida.
Though Florida is a sizzling spot for invasive species, pythons are notably tough—a January research by the U.S. Geological Survey known as them “one of the most intractable invasive-species management issues across the globe.” These snakes thrive in Florida for a number of causes—their coloring makes them troublesome to identify, they’re typically most energetic at night time, they usually spend a lot of their time submerged underwater or hidden in vegetation. The undeniable fact that the Everglades are watery and largely uninhabited, in addition to cowl 1000’s of miles, solely compounds the difficulty. “They don’t really lend themselves to being trapped well,” says Melissa Miller, a University of Florida ecologist engaged on a python-tracking program.
Over the previous few many years, these gigantic reptiles have wrought havoc on the state’s ecosystems. The constrictors have decimated native wildlife, together with opossums, rabbits, rats, and foxes, with some struggling a decline of as much as 99 p.c, in line with roadside surveys. They’ve swallowed pets, from legions of neighborhood cats to a 60-pound Siberian husky. Scientists maintain a working listing of the threatened or endangered animals which have been present in python stomachs: state-listed species just like the little blue heron, roseate spoonbill, and Big Cypress fox squirrel; federally threatened species just like the wooden stork; and federally endangered species just like the Key Largo woodrat and Key Largo cotton mouse. They compete with different predators, together with bobcats, Florida panthers, and native snakes, for prey.
And as adults, they’ve few recognized predators—mainly American alligators and crocodiles, bobcats, different snakes, and probably Florida panthers, in line with the USGS research. (Read extra about Florida’s panther conservation efforts.)
“It’s an emergency situation we’re in,” says Mike Kirkland, senior invasive animal biologist and python elimination program supervisor for the South Florida Water Management District.
Bankers turned bounty hunters
It’s unknown what number of Burmese pythons stay in Florida: some estimate tens of 1000’s, others akin to Florida Fish and Wildlife say it may very well be as many as 300,000. Siewe suspects these estimates are conservative. Even many consultants agree that with the strategies at present available to them, the purpose of eliminating invasive pythons, which may stay greater than 30 years, is unattainable.
Every week, Kirkland, 48, will get emails, letters, cellphone calls, and even in-person workplace visits from members of the general public who inform him why his life’s work is fruitless. “A lot of people have expressed that we’re never going to get a hold of this,” he says.
He additionally hears their theories on how they need to be tackling the issue—every little thing from carpet-bombing the Everglades with porcupines to introducing African elephants to trample them to flooding the complete southern area of Florida. “I try to be responsive to everyone,” Kirkland says. “Some of them are pretty out there.”
But to this point, sure information exhibits that killing the pythons one after the other is the best choice in contrast with trapping, utilizing dogs, luring snakes utilizing pheromones, and different strategies.
In 2017, the state started paying designated python hunters as much as $18 an hour to hunt out and kill the reptiles. On common, Kirkland says he receives 100 purposes per week, however solely a handful make it to the interview stage—primarily those who have already got some snake-catching expertise. Hunters have since eliminated greater than 13,000 snakes from the state, and Kirkland’s hunters are chargeable for greater than half, he says. They’re additionally licensed to euthanize different invasive snakes, together with the Northern African python, the reticulated python, and boa constrictors.
He leads a “colorful” workforce of fifty hunters, and Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has one other 50. Kirkland’s workforce doesn’t hunt full-time—throughout the day, they’re bankers, legal professionals, membership bouncers, alligator wrestlers, “you name it,” he says. It’s a various workforce, however all of them have a couple of issues in frequent, he says: they love snakes, they usually’re good at catching them.
Even although it’s “daunting,” Miller says it’s necessary to “have hope” in the event you’re doing analysis or managing invasive species. “If you just do nothing, then what? Then we don’t have native wildlife,” she says.
Vetting for bloodlust
Just exterior of Miami, there’s a street alongside a levee on which solely authorities contractors can drive to hunt for pythons.
On an early September night, Kirkland by chance drives proper previous it.
“I don’t get nervous when National Geographic gets here, not at all,” he jokes as he misses his exit. He turns the truck round and pulls onto the levee street.
Kirkland has good purpose to be cautious—within the almost seven years he’s led the python-hunting program, Florida has gotten loads of condemnation from animal welfare teams and journalists alike.
Clifford Warwick, an unbiased biologist and reptile knowledgeable in London, calls the python hunts “a waste of time.” Python populations will proceed rising for now, however ultimately, they may stabilize, he says. “I’m not somebody who is anti-control,” he says. “But you really have to weigh up the overall amount of damage involved and balance that against the humaneness.”
Particularly contentious is the state’s annual python problem, which Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission launched in 2013. Today, the competition, which is collectively hosted by the FWC and the SFWMD, presents greater than $30,000 in prizes and attracts effectively over a thousand individuals—a few of whom have by no means hunted a python earlier than—“plus enough newsfolk to staff a half-dozen O.J. Simpson trials,” writes one journalist. (Private residents, akin to Siewe, also can hunt snakes.) The occasion is “designed to help get the public engaged,” Kirkland says—and it does. This 12 months’s hunt attracted 1,050 individuals who killed 209 snakes throughout the 10-day problem.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has known as the competition a “grotesque” occasion that “sets laypeople loose to botch python killings.” At the primary problem in 2013, National Geographic described the obvious inexperience of a number of the individuals, together with ones “who had never seen a Burmese python before” and one who beneficial “swing[ing] a snake by the tail and slam[ming] its head into a tree” to stun them.
The Florida FWC makes use of the American Veterinary Medical Association’s humane euthanasia requirements for reptiles: knock them out and destroy the mind. Decapitation can be an accredited euthanasia technique, as long as the snake is unconscious and it’s adopted by instant pithing, or scrambling the mind with a needle or steel rod.
Warwick calls decapitation a “brutally cruel” technique, and he thinks it’s unlikely that civilian hunters routinely pith the snakes’ brains. “The head stays alive for maybe half an hour to an hour, and it’s fully conscious, and it will feel all the pain of the severance,” he says.
Though pythons are protected by state anti-cruelty legal guidelines, it’s troublesome to catch perpetrators.
“We do encourage the humane removal of pythons,” Kirkland says. “Is it a concern? Sure.” He says the state has performed outreach to teach the general public on easy methods to humanely kill pythons. Plus, contracted hunters and python problem individuals are required to reduce the animal’s struggling.
“I won’t work with anyone that has a bloodlust for these things,” he says. When Kirkland vets purposes, he avoids individuals who need to kill pythons “because they hate them.” He says that is “a native-animal-saving program, not a snake-killing program.”
“The day I become desensitized to it is the day I quit,” Kirkland says. “It’s very, very upsetting, but I’m really glad I’m in charge of this, because we make sure that the animals are treated with respect.”
Sleepless nights
“Every other night.”
That’s Kirkland’s reply after I ask him how a lot he sleeps, on common. Instead, he stays up, watching transferring dots on a map. These are the stay places of his python hunters, traceable by way of their cellphones. He watches them each night time they’re out, till the hunters ultimately go home and the dots disappear, typically as late as 4 a.m.
Kirkland has been married for 25 years to a really understanding spouse, he says—however he doesn’t have children. “I’ve got 50 kids already,” he says, referring to his hunters.
Although python hunters seize the general public’s consideration, about 75 p.c of Kirkland’s $1.1 million annual funds goes into researching new elimination strategies.
For occasion, researchers with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Southern Illinois University have outfitted opossums and raccoons with monitoring collars affixed with sensors which might be triggered when the animal dies. Experts can then discover the offending python and take away it.
Another workforce with the University of Florida has tried setting out stay rabbit pens to lure the pythons out of hiding, to allow them to be killed. (The rabbits are fed, watered, given toys, after which put up for adoption afterward.)
Kirkland has additionally co-funded tasks that monitor python motion and conduct, together with one by University of Florida’s Miller, who discovered one snake on a nest of 111 eggs, and he or she had 25 extra inside her. Females sometimes lay between 40 and 100 eggs each two years. (See the first-ever photographs of bobcats raiding a python nest.)
Kirkland’s even working with geneticists. One of their extra bold concepts is to edit Florida pythons’ genes so solely males may be born. But not solely is it costly, it could take many years to see outcomes, and he’d should persuade the taxpaying public that it’s a good suggestion to boost, home, and launch 1000’s of gene-edited snakes into the wild. “But just because it’s challenging or difficult to do doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it, right?”
Prolonging extinction?
Is all this effort in useless? Even the professionals can’t assist however ask that query.
“Sometimes I wonder, you know, are we just prolonging the extinction of some of these [native] animals?” Siewe asks. “I hope not.”
For now, Kirkland says “human detection and removal is the most effective means we have to manage the python issue,” however he’s extra enthusiastic about what’s to come back.
“I really want to see the Everglades in a much better place than it is now by the time I retire,” he says. “I’m optimistic that we’re going to reduce the python population enough so that native animals can return.”
