saddam (federal jester)

City boys can’t help themselves, they always portray sportsmen as rednecks, and in the case of Florida’s Python Challenge this post cannot be more wrong. Each year, Florida enacts one of the largest citizen science efforts in the world, the Python Challenge, as an invasive species culling event aimed at the Burmese Python, which has devastated Everglades food webs, ecology, and habitat. While the event is a hunt, it’s also the greatest source of scientific data collection on invasive pythons. The Python Challenge does not, as Antonio notes, entail “any local with a firearm showing up and blasting in any direction,” the python cull is tightly regulated and science-based invasive species culling effort hosted by Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, the University of Florida, and the South Florida Water Management District (the organization that employs the most PhDs in the state btw). There are no firearms allowed in the boundaries of Everglades national park, and these rules are systematized in FWC (state) managed areas meaning pythons must be euthanized using air guns or captive bolts, and carcasses have to be submitted at a check station within 24 hours of capture where UF scientists collect data. All Python challenge participants have to do a training called “FWC Python Patrol” to participate, which covers safe handling, humane euthanasia, and invasive species ecology. In Florida, non-native reptiles do not require a hunting license to harvest, and the no firearms rule has been in place since the Python Challenge began in 2013. Contrary to how this post portrays the Challenge, it’s truly a scientific affair. Most of what we know about invasive Python demographics and biology in the Everglades comes from this culling effort, which is half sporting contest and half large scale data gathering exercise. Challenge data collections and necropsy results have shown us the age and sex structure of pythons in the park (70% female, 10-15 eggs peer clutch), size averages (19 ft and >180 lbs), and stomach content analyses. All of the data we have on trophic interactions and cascade effects (62% of their diet is mid level mammals on the food web) comes from the Python Challenge. Even if hunters were “firing their guns in all directions” during the Challenge, which they aren’t, it’s important to remember that American hunters (through license sales and excise taxes on guns and ammo) provide the majority of wildlife conservation funding in all 50 states. Hunter surveys provide much of the management data on everything from waterfowl populations to big game herds, enabling science based management on game and non game species and habitat.