The Impact Of Burmese Pythons On The Everglades

Burmese Pythons are invasive species, meaning they are not native to a specific area and are causing havoc among that area. They are tertiary consumers because they eat almost anything in the wild. They were brought to the Everglades because of Hurricane Andrew. The hurricane destroyed homes causing the Pythons to be released into the wild and buildings holding Pythons got destroyed, so the pythons escaped. There were over 112,000 Pythons imported since 1990. Pythons in the Everglades are negatively impacting the ecosystem. “Give a weed in inch and it will take a yard” relates to the Pythons by saying that if you were to give the Pythons an area to live in, they will inhabit the whole area and destroy that area and its ecosystem.

Pythons have

They are more likely to reproduce in the winter climate. They have eaten through a lot of our native species such as Cottontail Rabbits, Wood Mice, and even Alligators. Wood mice are an endangered species because the Pythons are eating them as food. Researchers conducted an experiment about live and dead animals on roads between 2003 and 2011. Before 2000, it was common to see mammals on the roadways at night. They found that “Raccoon observations dropped by 99.3 percent, opossum by 98.9 percent, and bobcat by 87.5 percent. The scientists saw no rabbits or foxes at all during their survey.” (Christine Dell’Amore, Paragraph 11) They kill their prey by “snuggling” them to death until the suffocate, then eat them whole by expanding their jaws. As told by Pythons Eating Through Everglades Mammals at “Astonishing” rate?: “Many of these animals, which can grow to lengths of 20 feet (6 Meters) have either escaped or been dumped into the wild.” (Christine Dell’Amore, Paragraph 4) An example of the Pythons causing chaos to the ecosystem is if a Python were to eat the Rabbits in an ecosystem with just: Rabbits eating Plants, Snakes eating Rabbits, and Hawks eating Snakes. This would cause the Snake population to decrease because they do not have enough Rabbits to eat. The Hawk population would decrease because they would not have enough Snakes to eat. The plant population will increase because

This means that the Python population will increase. Scientists are finding ways to mitigate their population. Some of these ways are by “implanting radio tracking systems in 17 large Pythons, setting traps to capture them, using chemical attractants during the mating season to capture the Pythons and using a trained dog, such as Python Pete, to track down the wild snakes in their natural habitat.” (South Florida Natural Resources Center Everglades National Park, Paragraph