Florida Mounts a Hunt for Creatures That Maintain a Very Low Profile

[cpzilliacus]

N.Y. Times: Florida Mounts a Hunt for Creatures That Maintain a Very Low Profile

For as long as anyone can remember, hunters here have wielded machetes, knives, rifles and crossbows as they swept past thickets of mosquitoes and saw grass in pursuit of alligators, feral hogs, bobcats and vermin of all sizes.

But on the outskirts of the Everglades this month, a different kind of hunt is taking place, and among those on the trail are three men with little macho swagger and zero hunting finery. They drive up gravel roads alongside the brush in a red "man-van"  (a well-lived in Toyota Sienna) and a blue Prius ("You can't beat the mileage,"  says one).

[formulanone]

Those pythons have been known eat alligators, and pretty much everything else...that really upsets the Everglades ecosystem just a tad.

This is what we get when people just get sick of their pet snakes, and dump them into the nearest canal. We've also had some rather unusual cross-bred lizards in the suburban wild over the past 10-20 years, thanks to this type of behavior (although also in part to other things, like shipping containers full of illegal animals for sale, and foreign visitors), which makes things a little like a miniature version of Jurassic Park.

[triplemultiplex]

Boy I'm really happy to see this story get so much attention in so much of the media I consume.  Invasive species are something that really stick in my craw.  And especially ones like Florida's python population which are only there because of stupid retards thinking its cool just get rid of an animal by releasing into the wild somewhere without knowing jack shit about what a horrible thing they have just done to their local environment.  A combination of ignorance and not giving a shit is all it takes to have your local waters overflowing with invasive carp or all of your greenspace overrun with thickets of Eurasian Buckthorn.  It's a tragic loss of biodiversity that can't be effectively reversed.  Soon every similar climate on the planet will have the exact same species living there thanks to the idiocy and carelessness of humans.
Yet another thing contributing to the Holocene Mass Extinction.

[3467]

Well said Triple. I do wonder about the pop estimat of 150,000 since only 30 have been killed

[bugo]

Releasing invasive species into the wild should be a felony.

[cjk374]

The snakes are everywhere and nowhere. Catching them is easy.

Is the author of this publication from Alanland? 

[mgk920]

Boy I'm really happy to see this story get so much attention in so much of the media I consume.  Invasive species are something that really stick in my craw.  And especially ones like Florida's python population which are only there because of stupid retards thinking its cool just get rid of an animal by releasing into the wild somewhere without knowing jack shit about what a horrible thing they have just done to their local environment.  A combination of ignorance and not giving a shit is all it takes to have your local waters overflowing with invasive carp or all of your greenspace overrun with thickets of Eurasian Buckthorn.  It's a tragic loss of biodiversity that can't be effectively reversed.  Soon every similar climate on the planet will have the exact same species living there thanks to the idiocy and carelessness of humans.
Yet another thing contributing to the Holocene Mass Extinction.

I have also been seeing an explosion in the presence of invasive Eurasian phragmites, especially along highway ROW here in NE Wisconsin over the past few years.

http://www.wisconsinwetlands.org/phragmites.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phragmites



Mike

[DAL764]

Those pythons have been known eat alligators, and pretty much everything else...that really upsets the Everglades ecosystem just a tad.

Which is what makes it even more remarkable that quite a few supposed "animal friends" are up in arms about this snake hunt, claiming that is barbaric and human and just done for fun . Yes, of course many of the hunters do it just for fun, but every single python killed is one (admittedly very small) step in helping the Everglades.

Actually, personally I wouldn't mind if they did these hunts on a weekly basis, there are still plenty of pythons to go around for the hunters.

[triplemultiplex]

I have also been seeing an explosion in the presence of invasive Eurasian phragmites, especially along highway ROW here in NE Wisconsin over the past few years.

http://www.wisconsinwetlands.org/phragmites.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phragmites

Yeah that stuff is really getting around.  There are patches along I-41 where your car would disappear if you went off the road into one.  I hope that big Duck Creek Estuary there at the end of I-43 isn't totally overrun yet.

That whole corridor is becoming quite the showcase of invasive plants.  And unfortunately, road construction is a part of the problem.  Fresh turned earth is great for them to colonize.  Usually you start to see them the second year after a big project.  Pretty much anything growing on the shoulder that early that isn't grass is probably an invasive plant.  And I'm pretty sure those giant leafy things growing in Lake Butte des Morts are invasive too.

[Alps]

I have also been seeing an explosion in the presence of invasive Eurasian phragmites, especially along highway ROW here in NE Wisconsin over the past few years.

http://www.wisconsinwetlands.org/phragmites.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phragmites

Yeah that stuff is really getting around.  There are patches along I-41

Quaaa?

[mgk920]

I have also been seeing an explosion in the presence of invasive Eurasian phragmites, especially along highway ROW here in NE Wisconsin over the past few years.

http://www.wisconsinwetlands.org/phragmites.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phragmites

Yeah that stuff is really getting around.  There are patches along I-41

Quaaa?

'US(I)-41'



Mike

[mgk920]

I have also been seeing an explosion in the presence of invasive Eurasian phragmites, especially along highway ROW here in NE Wisconsin over the past few years.

http://www.wisconsinwetlands.org/phragmites.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phragmites

Yeah that stuff is really getting around.  There are patches along I-41 where your car would disappear if you went off the road into one.  I hope that big Duck Creek Estuary there at the end of I-43 isn't totally overrun yet.

That whole corridor is becoming quite the showcase of invasive plants.  And unfortunately, road construction is a part of the problem.  Fresh turned earth is great for them to colonize.  Usually you start to see them the second year after a big project.  Pretty much anything growing on the shoulder that early that isn't grass is probably an invasive plant.  And I'm pretty sure those giant leafy things growing in Lake Butte des Morts are invasive too.

Those low reed beds in Big Lake Butte des Morts along the US(I)-41 causeway in Oshkosh are actually native in that lake system and there was and continues to be alarm expressed within local conservation/sportsman circles about their decline during the late 20th century.  They are great fish habitat.

Mike

[triplemultiplex]

Those low reed beds in Big Lake Butte des Morts along the US(I)-41 causeway in Oshkosh are actually native in that lake system and there was and continues to be alarm expressed within local conservation/sportsman circles about their decline during the late 20th century.  They are great fish habitat.

Not the reed beds.  I mean those giant lily-pad looking things.
But after a brief search, I can't find anything to the effect that those aren't also native.  The DNR will list all the invasive species for lakes in this state.  The list for Butte des Morts doesn't have anything I don't recognize and none of those are the big lily pad things.  I just never see those anywhere else and being next to a city with lots of boats coming from all over, I just assumed.  I thought it was a species of water hyacinth or something, but it turns out that stuff is too tropical to take root in Wisconsin.
Hyacinth is a problem down in Florida; America's invasive species capital.

Quaaa?

It's all but a done deal.  41 is the new I-number.

[mgk920]

Those low reed beds in Big Lake Butte des Morts along the US(I)-41 causeway in Oshkosh are actually native in that lake system and there was and continues to be alarm expressed within local conservation/sportsman circles about their decline during the late 20th century.  They are great fish habitat.

Not the reed beds.  I mean those giant lily-pad looking things.
But after a brief search, I can't find anything to the effect that those aren't also native.  The DNR will list all the invasive species for lakes in this state.  The list for Butte des Morts doesn't have anything I don't recognize and none of those are the big lily pad things.  I just never see those anywhere else and being next to a city with lots of boats coming from all over, I just assumed.  I thought it was a species of water hyacinth or something, but it turns out that stuff is too tropical to take root in Wisconsin.
Hyacinth is a problem down in Florida; America's invasive species capital.

To the best of my knowledge, those are common native pond lilies.  I've seen them on many lakes in Wisconsin.

Mike

[Road Hog]

Some fisherman in 1980 caught a piranha in Louisiana. I'm surprised those aren't all over the place now.