State Hired Python Hunters Catch A Big One

The new Florida Water Management District program to reduce the population of invasive Burmese pythons in the Everglades had at least one success story over the weekend.

Two python hunters nabbed a 15-foot snake that they said put up a “real fight.”

The two-month experimental hunting program began March 25.

Burmese pythons are at the top of the food chain in the Everglades, with no natural predators and eating their way north and south.

“They are ambush predators,” said Nick Aumen, senior science advisor for the southeast region of the U.S. Geological Survey. “They lay in wait for their prey, buried in vegetation. Any pythons that we can remove is good.”

Florida is trying myriad ways to reduce the python population, which is estimated to be in the tens of thousands.

Geneticists work in labs identifying python whereabouts by testing for their DNA in water samples.