Today’s entry: Brian, enjoy the show. Thanks for sharing the python tagging info. That’s the most encouraging news I’ve heard yet. The python removal program has always had the feeling of one step forward and two steps back. The tagging idea sounds more promising. How many are tagged in this program & do we know how effective it's been beyond this one in the news?
Bottom Line: Today’s note is on back of yesterday’s update about how the record setting python pulled out of the Everglades came to be. But while the rest of the world is allured by the size and pictures of an 18-foot long, 215-pound snake being yanked out of the Everglades. How it was done is the most important part of the story. The researchers responsible for the record reptile were from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. These researchers have taken to tagging males – which have taken them to the egg producing females. This record setter was found through this method and was buried so deep in Glades’ brush researchers said they’d have never found her without have tagged a male that led to finding the record setting female. But while news of the tagging program may be new to us, it's not entirely new for this use.
Tagging pythons in the Everglades is nearly a decade old. The first tag testing took place in 2013. After years of fits and starts with lots of learning, the program took its first big leap forward in the Everglades during the 2019-2020 breeding season. That year a massive commitment to the effort took place. A new program was created as a byproduct of the years of previous tests which was coordinated by the US Geological Survey, the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and the local researchers who just pulled the record setter out of the Everglades – the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. The initiative was funded with a $142 million grant issued by the Trump administration aimed at “early detection, rapid response, control, research and prevention” of python populations in the Everglades.
The way the program works:
- Males of breeding age are captured and taken to the conservancy (or Interior Department lab) where a veterinarian tags them
- Tagged snakes are released near where they were captured
- The movements are tracked until patterns suggest they’re around others
- Females and non-breeding males are captured and euthanized
The initial returns were promising. During the first full year of the tagging program a total of 86 pythons, including 53 females with 2,500 developing eggs weighing in at a combined 5,000 pounds were found and removed from the Everglades. There’s reason to believe the success will continue to improve as evidenced by the record setter just removed. While far more attention goes to the annual Python Challenge, which is successful in its own right – having accounted for the harvesting of a record 223 pythons last year alone – it's this program which is the most strategic and likely represents the best opportunity to truly turn the tide on their proliferation and devastation. Large females are obviously the highest value targets and that’s exactly what this program addresses.
Of course, what isn’t known is how many pythons are in the Everglades. Estimates as high as 100,000 have been thrown around but it's really anyone's guess. On the one hand it’s great to hear about record numbers and record sizes of pythons being captured in the Everglades as we know they’re no longer a threat. On the other hand, the reality is that as long as we’re setting new records, we’re potentially losing the battle – with numbers growing faster than our efforts to remove them. So, the true tell of how much progress we’re really making may eventually come as our efforts and sophistication ramps up as the overall number of captured pythons declines. That said, there’s reason for optimism we might eventually get there in large part due to the python tagging program.
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