After trying almost everything else to solve its invasive snake problem, Florida this year turned to python-hunting Irula tribesmen from India. Working alongside university-trained sniffer dogs from Alabama’s Auburn University, the Irula team’s early results are impressive.
What’s wrong with pythons?
Nothing. Burmese pythons are lovely. And enormous, sometimes stretching nearly six metres long. However these Asiatic travellers first took root — whether released as unwanted pets or blown out of a breeding facility by a hurricane, as some officials believe — they love the Everglades. And no amount of extreme vetting has prevented this non-native species from eating its way to the top of the food chain, adding strain to an already depleted subtropical wetlands ecosystem and putting a range of native species at risk. Some studies suggest the python invasion could eventually expand north as far as Washington, D.C. Others say cold winters will keep the snakes well to the south.
What’s been tried before?
Plenty, including several state-sanctioned removal programs. Most memorably, Florida is known for its seasonal Python Challenge, which last year attracted more than 1,000 hunters from across the U.S. Some suffered bites to the face in their quest for the beige, splotchy snakes. The various kill techniques have come under scrutiny from animal rights groups, prompting officials to more closely monitor the hunt. Some of the hunters fared better than others, but in the end, 2016’s month-long hunt netted only 106 pythons — about one for every 10 registrants.
What’s happening now?
The twist for 2017 involves a far higher level of human skill, thanks to a small team of snake-hunting Irula tribesmen from Tamil Nadu, India’s southernmost province. The idea was hatched by world-renowned herpetologist Romulus Whitaker (right), who is now in Florida with expert Irula snake-hunters Masi Sadaiyan and Vadivel Gopal, demonstrating how to bag a python without high-powered weaponry. Barely two weeks in, these two hunters have bagged more than 20 pythons — a rate of capture about 100 times greater than that of Florida’s previous hunts.
Four-legged helpers
Working alongside the Irulas are specially trained sniffer dogs from Auburn University’s Canine Performance Sciences Program. The dogs are raised to track python scent. But once the scent is found, the Irula team completes the job. What to untrained eyes might seem the tiniest scrape in the ground can telegraph to Irula hunters important detail, including the size, species and travel direction of a snake. In India, Irula snake-catchers make a living capturing and extracting venom from a variety of poisonous snakes before releasing the animals back to the wild. They sell their harvest for the production of antivenom serum.
The work can get messy
Among the Irulas’ early successes was the capture in late January of a group of pythons at an abandoned Nike missile silo in what is now the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Key Largo. None of the University of Florida experts on hand believed there were pythons to be had at the location, but the Irulas knew otherwise. One of the team emerged from a ventilation shaft splattered in snake poop, shrugging off the mess as an occupational hazard. The night’s harvest included one especially large specimen — a 4.8-metre female weighing 75 kilograms.
What next?
Nobody knows precisely how many Burmese pythons roam Florida’s wetlands. But the number is believed to be in the thousands, perhaps as many as 20,000. Regardless of the actual figure, Florida is going to need a lot more Irulas next year and beyond if it intends to scale up to invasion-reversing proportions. But having employed everything from heat-sensing drones to the surgical implantation of radio transmitters inside female pythons in previous failed bids at containment, officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are clearly delighted with the early success of 2017. Meanwhile, the hunt continues.
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