FLORIDA
Hyperbole squeezes Everglades python problem
Some exaggeration has slithered into snake debate, experts say.
By Paul Quinlan
THE PALM BEACH POST
Saturday, August 01, 2009
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — One week after a pe t python escaped its terrarium and strangled a 2-
year-old Florida girl, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson unfurled a 16-foot python skin at a congressional hearing
and warned, "It's just a matter of time before one of these things gets to a visitor in the Florida
Everglades."
The next week, he called for a python posse to hunt and kill the beasts, citing the "estimated 100,000 or
more pythons now roaming the 'Glades." So began the Great Florida Python Hunt, with a special media
kickoff during which hunters actually captured one of the elusive snakes.
Afterward, Nelson said: "One down, 99,999 to go." And this week, NBC reporter Kerry Sanders told the
"Today" show that "it's estimated there are more than 150,000 wild Burmese pythons on the loose."
But the idea that scientists estimate the number of pythons living in the Everglades at 100,000 — or
150,000, according to a news release from U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney of Tequesta, Fla. — is one of several
questionable facts and statistics that have helped propel the Everglades' python problem into headlines
worldwide recently.
Other claims include the fear that pythons, if ignored, will come to dominate the Everglades food chain,
wiping out whole species, and eventually spread across the southern third of the United States.
In fact, pythons in Everglades National Park probably number closer to 30,000, park biologists say.
What's more, pythons face numerous predators in the Everglades, raising the possibility that the
population growth could plateau well before significant numbers of the snakes move into residents'
backyards. And new research has cast doubt on an oft-cited government study that says pythons could
spread far north.
Nobody disputes that pythons pose a threat to the ecosystem — in partic ular, to wading birds and the
dozens of other threatened or endangered species in the Everglades.
But snake experts note that some facts have been skewed.
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