|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
Go DeeperStopping a Burmese Python Invasion |
Each day when U.S. Postal Service carrier Marsha Fletcher-Shew makes her rounds delivering letters and parcels in the Florida Keys, she keeps a careful eye out for trouble, scanning the shoulders of roads as she drives along. As members of The Nature Conservancy’s rapid-response Python Patrol task force, she and many other drivers on the island are keeping a vigilant watch out for Burmese pythons — invasive snakes that have made the six-mile swim through the mangroves and marshes that form a watery trail from Florida’s mainland to Key Largo.
“It’s a frightening feeling knowing that pythons are living on the same island I live on. I definitely keep my eyes open,” Fletcher-Shew says. “All of the rural carriers in this zip code are on the lookout.”
The pythons, a species from Asia that can grow up to 23 feet long, have been firmly entrenched in the Everglades for at least a decade, most likely after individuals escaped or were released by pet owners. The snakes have a voracious appetite, and ecologists fear they could wipe out some species native to the Keys if a breeding population establishes itself.
The snakes were discovered in the Keys in April 2007, when two researchers tracking an endangered Key Largo woodrat tagged with a radio-collar found the signal emanating from a 7-foot Burmese python deep in the woods. The captured snake’s stomach contents revealed the radio collar, along with the remains of two endangered woodrats. Six more pythons have been found since.
There are now more than 200 members of the “Eyes and Ears” team of the Python Patrol. Most are folks who spend a lot of time on the road, such as meter readers, safety officers and landscape crews. When a snake is spotted, team members phone in sightings to the state conservation office, and an officer is dispatched to the scene.
Alison Higgins, who leads the Conservancy’s invasives work in the Keys, says the purpose of the task force is twofold: “Stem this new invasion and contain the handful of pet snakes released in the Keys each year, either intentionally or accidently, before they become entrenched.”
—Jill Austin
Nature picture credits: Photo © Lori Oberhofer, National Park Service (Burmese python (Python molurus) and alligator locked in mortal combat)
Join The Nature Conservancy on