The hardest part of managing Burmese pythons in South Florida is not what to do with them after they are caught.
It is finding them in the first place.
People often suggest creating a market for pythons: sell the meat, use the skins, make boots, belts, purses, or other leather products. I understand the idea. If an invasive species has value, maybe more people will remove it.
But with Burmese pythons, there are two major complications.
First, eating them is not a simple solution. Burmese pythons in South Florida can accumulate high levels of mercury. That makes biological sense. They are large, long-lived predators feeding in a wetland system where mercury can move through food webs and bioaccumulate over time.
Rumbold and Bartoszek (2019) documented mercury in tissues of Burmese pythons from southwest Florida, including liver concentrations as high as 4.86 mg/kg, and noted that pythons from Everglades National Park had previously shown even higher concentrations.
Florida now advises against consuming python meat because of mercury concerns.
Leather is a different issue. I have no objection to using skins from pythons that are already being removed. Make boots, belts, purses, watch bands — whatever. If the animal has already been removed, using the skin may reduce waste and may create some incentive.
But neither meat nor leather solves the central problem.
Someone still has to find the snake.
That is the bottleneck.
All currently used control approaches depend on detecting individual pythons, usually one at a time. Searchers find snakes crossing roads or levees. Experienced hunters look along canal edges, marsh edges, tree islands, and other places where pythons are more likely to occur. Scout snakes, detector dogs, robotic lures, thermal tools, and other approaches may improve detection under certain conditions.
All of this can be useful.
But South Florida is a vast, complex, difficult-to-access landscape, and pythons are remarkably hard to detect. A person can walk past a 15-foot python hidden in vegetation or water and never know it is there.
That is why removal records should not be confused with population size. The number of pythons found tells us something important, but it does not tell us how many were missed.
Every python removed matters. It is one less predator on the landscape and one less potential contributor to future reproduction. Removals also provide valuable information for research and management.
But if the goal is meaningful population suppression across large areas, the question is not simply how to create more uses for dead pythons.
The harder question is how to remove or kill enough pythons to make a real dent in the population.
Thus far, we do not have an answer.
Reference:
Rumbold, D. G., and I. A. Bartoszek. 2019. Mercury concentrations in invasive Burmese pythons of Southwest Florida. Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 103:533–537.
This Insight is part of my ongoing LinkedIn series on reptiles, amphibians, conservation biology, invasive species, and scientific writing. Follow Michael E. Dorcas on LinkedIn for new posts and discussion.