O/T Burmese Pythons in the Everglades

[Guest]

"Arriving with growing frequency through international trade and travel, non-native plants and animals can disrupt ecosystems that evolved for thousands of years without them. While many of these species turn out to be harmless, some have crowded out native wildlife. Fire ants from South America, for example, have spread throughout the Southeastern United States, killing small animals and out-competing native ants.

 

Pythons are capable of killing and eating every variety of bird and mammal in the park, with the exception of full-grown panthers, Snow said. In the digestive tracts of pythons killed at the park, biologists have found the remains of gray squirrels, cotton rats, black rats, opossum, pied-billed grebes and house wrens. And in an ominous development, pythons have been seen with growing frequency at Paurotis Pond, site of a rookery of endangered wood storks."

 

The full story

 

[Guest]

There are far too many exotic species that have been released or escaped into the Everglades. Visit any herpetologic exhibit sometime and be amazed at the bizarre range of people who want dangerous and venomous animals to keep as pets. They sometimes are legitimate students of herpetology but all too often just weird people who will eventually either release or lose their pets into the wild.

 

The exotic pet trade needs to be carefully and forcefully limited.