Biologists at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida are part of a decade-long Burmese python research and removal team, whose work is starting to show results in the battle against the invasive apex predators.
"We read the tea leaves," Bartoszek says."We see what our animals are telling us and we adapt and maneuver every season. And that's why we've become successful at removal efforts. We're interested in what they're interested in, breeding females."He's an ally in the battle against the pythons, a male that's proven in the past to attract females during the winter and spring breeding season.
"Hurricane Irma pushed them out of Everglades National Park and into the Gulf of Mexico," Bartoszek explains."Stone crabbers were finding them coiled up around their crab trap buoys about 15 miles off Highland Beach."Releasing males back into the wild does come with certain consequences as the males must eat, too. But the ends justify the means as one male snake can lead biologists to several female snakes.
"If you take the average of 46 eggs and then you get the sense of those eggs that the male kept from potentially hatching," he explains, then"you can say hundreds of eggs that snake kept us from hatching that season alone. Does that justify what the male eats? One thousand percent."That 31-pound snake was found with a 35-pound fawn in its digestive tract.
Both biologists say George is a little thin. Males are skinny this time of year because they spend the winter and most of the spring traveling to find prime females. For the team, April is a transition month between the breeding season and the necropsy and data analysis season. They both roughly mimic the transition between dry and wet season here.
The snakes here have evolved to the point that they have different DNA from the snakes in their home range, which is one minor reason why the snakes can't be sent back to Southeast Asia.
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