The United States held a "snake hunting bounty competition"!

According to foreign media reports, the annual "Burmese python hunting event" held by the U.S. government of Florida opened in early August. A total of more than 800 participants came to the Everglades in southern Florida to participate in the challenge. In the competition, the participants who killed the largest number of Burmese pythons can get thousands of dollars in cash prizes. There are additional prizes for catching and killing the longest Burmese python.

The Burmese python has proliferated in Florida and is the region's most notorious and destructive invasive alien species, posing a huge threat to native wildlife species. Estimates of the number of Burmese pythons inhabiting the entire Florida swamp may range from 30,000 to 300,000.

Burmese pythons have a wide diet, with 47 species of birds, 20 species of mammals, and two species of reptiles in their repertoire, and even American alligators are among their prey. The rampant hunting of Burmese pythons has led to a sharp decline in the populations of many native species in the region.

Tracking data from 2003 to 2011 show that

Swamp rabbits, cottontail rabbits, and foxes have almost disappeared in the swampy areas of south Florida; raccoon occurrences have dropped by 99.3%; North American possum populations have dropped by 98.9% and short-tailed cat populations have dropped by 87.5% ...... pairs, all by Burmese pythons!!!

The ranks of Burmese pythons are still gradually expanding, and they are not only wreaking havoc in Florida but also migrating outward to expand their habitat. They have been found in several states close to Florida. This has caused great concern to the locals.

To solve the problem of the Burmese python's crazy proliferation and protect the native species and ecology, the U.S. government has tried various methods to cure them, but the results are not satisfactory. So the relevant departments began to hold a long-term "Python Challenge", organizing professional python hunters at home and abroad or capable people to hunt Burmese pythons, and setting high prizes to reward the outstanding achievements of the hunters. Every year, many bounty hunters will gather in Florida to compete for the championship.

However, Burmese pythons are not so easy to catch, they are good at hiding, they are very difficult to find, and their size is too large and aggressive, so it is too difficult to hunt and kill, and you may lose your life. The speed of catching snakes is simply not as fast as the growth of Burmese python reproduction. Therefore, although the Florida authorities have spent a lot of money, they have been unable to control the growth of the Burmese python population! Therefore, Burmese pythons have been the focus of a crackdown in the United States so far, and are constantly being hunted down and killed.

Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia (Central and South East Asia, Malay Peninsula, Northern India, etc.) and are also found in some forested areas in the south of China (Guangdong, Yunnan and Guizhou, Hainan, Hunan, Fujian and, other provinces and regions).

The Burmese python is a giant non-venomous snake, one of the six largest pythons in the world. Adult individuals of this species can reach an average length of 5 meters or even higher, and weigh up to more than 90 kg. Although non-venomous, Burmese pythons can rely on their powerful strangulation ability, biting first and then wrapping and swallowing. They mostly live in tropical rain forests, and the United States is not the native home of Burmese pythons, so how did they show up in Florida, USA, and become widespread?

Burmese pythons are small, cute, docile, and not difficult to keep when they are small. In the 1970s, Burmese pythons began to be introduced and sold as pets in Florida, USA, and also as ornamental animals, introduced by many zoos to attract tourists. Pet dealers, in pursuit of profit, sold them without specifying the size of the Burmese python when it grew up and the potential threat. Many breeders did not expect this small snake to grow exceptionally fast, getting bigger and bigger and growing into a giant animal within a few years. The size was beyond imagination, and it was still a pure carnivore with a rather large appetite. Gradually, many breeders began to raise can afford to raise, dare not raise, we began to abandon, the "big snake" has been released into the wild swamps.

In addition, some Burmese pythons have escaped from zoos, large Burmese python farms and homes into the Florida Everglades due to the powerful hurricane.

The warm and humid climate of the Florida region, with its vast swamps in the south, provides a paradise environment for Burmese pythons, with abundant food, no natural predators, and few humans.

The Burmese python has a high reproductive capacity (one female lays 20-50 eggs per year, sometimes as many as 80), and with no natural predators, the survival rate of its young is extremely high, and it has a long life span (males can live about 15 years, females can live 25 years or longer), so the size of the population in the wild is growing exponentially.

More and more Burmese pythons are "killing it" in the wild, crushing local native species and breaking the region's ecosystem. When the U.S. began to notice, the guys were already overrun and began taking control action against Burmese pythons to try to save the ecosystem. National python hunting bounty competitions were launched, killing Burmese pythons and encouraging people to eat them.

In 2017, the Python Eradication Program was also launched, also to control the Burmese python population, which is a long-term campaign to

1. recruit professional python killers to hunt Burmese pythons in designated areas on a long-term basis.

2. charging by the hour: python hunters are paid $10 to $15 per hour for patrolling within the Great Swamp, with a maximum of 10 hours of hunting time per day.

3. Reward for each python captured, and the number of bonuses will gradually increase with the size of the snake.

An additional $50 for each Burmese python up to 4 feet (about 1.22 meters) in length that is hunted.

An additional $25 for each additional foot (0.3048 m) of python over 4 feet in length.

4. An additional $200 for each verified python activity nest destroyed.

In addition, python hunters can keep the skin and meat for "sale" after catching the snake, which can bring them additional income.

Sadly, since the Burmese python hunt and the Python Eradication Program, only a few thousand have been killed! This is just the tip of the iceberg compared to the huge population of 300,000. The Burmese python is still breeding in large numbers and the rate of capture is far behind the rate of increase. As you can see, bounty hunting is not the answer to the problem of the proliferation of Burmese pythons in Florida.

It is worth mentioning that while Burmese pythons are hunted and killed in the United States, they are a nationally protected species in China and cannot be caught or fought. The Burmese python has been hunted and killed by natural predators in China and other places of origin, making it difficult for it to live to adulthood. It has also been hunted and killed in large numbers to snakeskin for high-end leather materials, and its habitat has been shrinking due to ecological damage.