Number of pythons in Glades slippery

In the dense woods, isolated swamps and steamy hammocks of the Florida Everglades, the battle for supremacy rages on, at least according dispatches from the front by federal and state authorities.

Now those dispatches that claim tens of thousands - perhaps even more than 100,000 - of marauding Burmese python roam the area, have come into question by wildlife experts who say there can't possibly be that many out there.

As the invasion enters its fourth decade (the first python was spotted there in 1979), some are beginning to say the strength of the slithering snake infantry is way overblown.

Wildlife experts and proponents of the exotic pet industry scoff at some estimates that there are more than 100,000 pythons in the Everglades, even though that was the number used by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in support of his bill to ban importation of pythons. Some government biologists have said there could be as many as 140,000 pythons in the Everglades and surrounding areas.

Whatever the numbers, the gripping photos stick in people's memory, evidence that a primal struggle for survival is being waged between the invaders and the natives, most notable of which is the American alligator, whose bloodline has prowled the 4,300 square miles of the Everglades since prehistoric times. Both are vying for top prize: the first link of the food chain; the reptilian king of the jungle.

Photos of an alligator eating a thick squirming snake and a giant snake eating a 6-foot alligator (both died as a result) are dramatic. So is the photo of the staff of an Okeechobee animal hospital hoisting the body of a 17-foot, 200-pound python they found and killed next to their clinic in July.

And as the reptiles battle on, the estimates of the invaders' strength vary widely depending on who is doing the estimating.

Linda Friar, spokeswoman for Everglades National Park, admitted there may be as few as 5,000 pythons loose in the area. Or there may be as many as 140,000. She said that some of the disparity stems from what area is being covered by estimates and who is giving the figures. The Everglades National Park is 2,400 square miles, while the entire Everglades ecosystem encompasses 18,000 square miles.

"Most folks tend to go to the high range," she said. "But, it all depends on who you are talking to. It's just a best guess. There's no empirical data. It's an elusive species, so we don't really know how many there are. We do know that they've adapted to the habitat.

"We know they are reproducing," she said. "We found nests and hatchlings."

Snakes on a plain

The first python nest was found in 2006, she said. Python nests have between 40 and 100 hatchlings, she said, and "that makes us extremely concerned. It's significant. Most exotic species don't tend to survive there. It's a relatively harsh environment.

"We don't know what the survival rate is," she said. "There are a number of things that eat hatchlings, like wading birds, alligators and other snakes."

As the fight for survival continues, the high estimates of python numbers vex some wildlife experts.

There can't be hundreds or even tens of thousands of pythons, they say, or the snakes would be crawling onto the decks of airboats and across hoods of cars cruising Alligator Alley.

"I've heard numbers of up to 200,000," said Vernon Yates, founder of Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in Seminole, "I'd like to know how they come up with that stupid exaggeration.

"I believe it's probably around 1,000," he said. "That would be more realistic."

"Let's assume that there are 150,000 pythons there," he said. "I'd bet there are not 150,000 alligators in the Everglades; not 150,000 deer in the Everglades; I know there's not even near that in bears.

"But, you can go to the Everglades, see alligators, see deer, see bear; hell, you can even find panthers," he said. "I drive over Alligator Alley a lot. Every time, I see five dead alligators at least."

But, he said, not the first python, dead or alive.

Even a single python loose in Florida is too many, he said, but trapping them and then killing them, which is what trappers are required to do, goes too far, he said.

"I think it's a good idea to put a bounty on them, to go out and trap them," he said. "I have a hard time saying every one collected has to die."

Yates, who himself has trapped pythons in the Tampa Bay area, has doubts about the snakes' chances of survival in the Everglades' harsh environment.

"I don't believe they are going to make it in the wild," he said. "They don't reproduce that fast and young snakes are preyed upon by the myriad of birds and other animals there that keep other snakes in check."

Joe Fauci, owner of Southeast Reptile Exchange, said he's heard from various sources that there could be as many 180,000 pythons in the Everglades. He seriously doubts that.

He has no idea why people would inflate figures, unless there is money or fame to be made through it somehow.

"I want to know how these guys can even make that estimate," he said. Pythons could not survive in that environment, he said. His money is on the gators and birds.

While ospreys and eagles would munch on smaller pythons, the larger ones aren't safe either, Fauci said.

"They would get eaten too," he said. "If a 12-foot Burmese swims in front of an 8-foot alligator he's going to get eaten up. Those alligators are going to chew them up 99 percent of the time. It's a nice little meal."

Unwanted neighbors

National Park Service biologists say that in October 2005, 22 pythons were killed by tractors tilling up the soil in one section of the preserve.

In 2006, 122 pythons were documented in the Everglades and biologists estimated then that there were more than 1,000. The increase was up considerably from the 11 pythons reported between 1995 and 2000.

Biologists say that before 1995, they had found only one in the big swamp, in 1979.

In July, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission authorized a handful of herpetologists to go on hunting sprees. They were given a free hand to conduct special operations missions into the wilds of the swamp to eliminate with extreme prejudice the invading hordes.

The first day, hunters found a 10-foot python and the second weekend, three python hatchlings. Since then, hunting has been off. Only about a dozen of the reptiles have been captured, but the hunters say safaris will be more fruitful when the weather cools and the snakes come out for sun.

Biologists don't hold much hope for eliminating the species from the Everglades altogether, according to a National Parks Service newsletter published in July.

But they do want to control the species, to keep the python problem from worsening. Biologists are trying to cut the python population of South Florida to the "ecologically extinct level - that is, to numbers so low that the species cannot play a significant role in ecosystem functioning," the newsletter says.

"We'd then be dealing with nuisance pythons here and there," the publication said, "not pythons by the hundreds of thousands causing serious problems in geographically widespread areas."

The damage an invasive species such as Burmese pythons can do to the Everglades is obvious, said Friar of the National Park Service. The ecosystem is delicate.

"We have a large predator coming in that can disrupt the natural system of who eats whom," she said. "There is competition for food sources. The more you add to the competition, the more you throw out of balance a pretty fragile system."

Looking to the future, biologists are wondering what other exotic pets are coming into the state that someday may find their way into the wild and take root.

"Some people just may not understand that it's not good to release these species into wild," she said. "They think they're sending them home.

"But they don't belong there."