Python hunting in Holeylands

By David Fleshler

South Florida Sun Sentinel

A crew of snake handlers, with a large group of reporters in tow, hit the Everglades this morning to answer questions about state plans to start hunting Burmese pythons -- and it didn't take long for one of the reptiles to show up.

The hunters caught a 9-foot python at a hunting camp they reached by airboat in west Broward County. The snake, the target of a new campaign to prevent the nonnative constrictors from extending their range beyond Everglades National Park, was put in a pillow case.

Officials plan to decapitate it and examine its stomach contents.

Just a small group of snake killers will participate in the initial hunt, as the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission assesses whether this is a feasible way to control a bizarre threat to South Florida's native wildlife.

The snake hunters will travel along roads and levees in the Holey Land, Everglades and Francis S. Taylor wildlife management areas, where hunters shoot deer and hogs.

The men engaging in the hunt are people from the reptile industry, which largely has been blamed for the problem.

State and federal biologists have said the Everglades snakes descended either from released unwanted pets or from an escape during the time of Hurricane Andrew.

Although the state will allow them to sell the meat and hide as compensation, three hunters interviewed said they didn't expect to earn anything.

"We're doing this to show that the reptile industry is interested in getting these snakes removed," said Greg Graziani, a Central Florida reptile breeder who will go on the hunt. "We want to be part of the solution."

As for the carcass, he said, "I don't know anyone who buys meat or hides. For right now, the carcass is not worth anything to me personally. There may not be enough meat or skin to do anything with."

After a day or two of preliminaries, in which they will survey the land, speak with local hunters and obtain maps, they will head out.

They usually will work at night. When they encounter a Burmese python, they will photograph it, note the location with a Global Positioning System, take measurements, determine its sex and cut off its head. They will examine its stomach contents on the spot.

They will not be allowed to use traps or firearms.

Shawn Heflick, of Palm Bay, an approved python hunter, said he's caught lots of pythons in southeast Asia, and there's really no danger to experienced hunters.

"We're not the prey," he said. "They're the prey. We're the predators."

If it's a small one -- say a mere 8-footer -- he'll pick it up with his hand. "You're going to get bit," he said. "But you kind of get used to that."

The reptile industry feels threatened by the publicity over the Everglades pythons and the recent death of a 2-year-old girl in Central Florida who was strangled by a pet python. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, has introduced a bill to ban the import and interstate trade in Burmese pythons, as well as the smaller ball python, which breeders and dealers consider a harmless species unfairly caught up in the Burmese python hysteria.

In a separate development Thursday, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced it is considering an expansion of a tightly controlled hunting program at Everglades National Park, where about a dozen volunteers catch pythons. And it said it's working on a program to allow hunters of deer, hogs and other game at Big Cypress National Preserve to shoot the snakes.

Although there has been talk of up to 150,000 pythons in the Everglades, state officials say they can't really estimate the numbers and prefer to simply say there are "thousands." The snakes have been dining on the native wildlife, such as wading birds, bobcats and deer.

The hunters are all reptile experts.

"I got my first snake when I was 4," said Michael Cole, of Haines City, another approved python hunter, who owns Ballroom Pythons South, a reptile company. "I bred my first snake at 13. I was catching and tagging rattlesnakes when I was 15."

Although he says the media and some scientists have unfairly blamed the industry for putting pythons in the Everglades, he acknowledged the industry got them into the country originally. Now he said they want to help solve the problem.

"We're not doing this for the skins or the meat," he said. "We're doing this to get rid of things that shouldn't have been there in the first place."