Save the Everglades, Eat Python for Christmas Dinner

to one and all. You might be sitting down later this week to a Christmas ham or a Christmas turkey, but wildlife officials in the state of Florida say you might want to consider swapping that out for a Christmas python. Pythons are a non native invasive species in Florida, and the havoc they've wreaked on the ecosystem there is nothing

short of catastrophic. Florida has tried dozens of tactics over the past couple of decades to eliminate these massive snakes or at least get their populations under control, but nothing seems to be working so now. As Bloomberg Glat Jennifer Kay reports, the States mindset seems to be if you can't beat him, eat him. Earlier this month, Florida Wildlife officials launched a study looking into whether pythons are safe

for widespread human consumption. They're hoping the answer is yes, and that creating new demand for python meat will incentivize more killing of these troublesome reptiles. I spoke with Jennifer from her home in Miami Beach about why it's actually come to this, and about how this python problem got started in the first place. Florida, you might know, is the I think it's home to most invasive species, definitely

most invasive reptiles and amphibians anywhere in the world. Animals that come here through trade through they come in as pets. They end up out in the Everglades, and they love it here, like snowbirds, like grandparents, like spring breakers. They just think it's great and they look at the Everglades, especially as just one giant buffet. So that's kind of where the pythons come in. It's believed that they come

pretty much entirely from the exotic pet trade. There are some stories about warehouses that got destroyed outside Miami by Hurricane Andrew in nineteen ninety two. That was one of the big hurricanes that hit the Miami area, and lots of baby pythons apparently got flung into the Everglades, where they found it to be a very nice home. But generally it's really not uncommon for people have these exotic pets and they get too big and too expensive and too ornery to keep feeding or to care for in

their house. They realize they're not such good pets after all, so they just release them into the wild where they don't have any predators. There's nothing here that knows what to do when a python kind of rolls up into the neighborhood, so they just kind of take over. Like

what are they doing to the environment? I mean, I've heard that they, you know, eat native species, like you know, rabbits and foxes, but like, can you elaborate on that, Like what kind of environmental devastation are these snakes reeking? So the easy answer is that pythons just eat way too much. They eat everything. They have nearly wiped out the Everglades populations of native mammals, which again have never never saw anything so voracious in the Everglades before these

pythons showed up. Researchers say that since nineteen ninety seven. Populations of raccoons have dropped ninety nine percent, bobcats have dropped eighty seven percent. Possome populations have dropped ninety nine percent. There are parts in the Everglades that just used to have lots of rabbits or fox and now those animals have just effectively disappeared. And all of these animals are believed to be in the stomach of a python somewhere.

They also eat animals that are on the endangered species list, So cute little things like the key Largo wood rat that we're spending a lot of time and money to try to keep around, pythons will eat them. And all of this means too that the pythons are eating food that Florida panthers, alligators and other native predators are supposed to be eating. They're just not leaving anything for the

native animals. But let's talk about what Florida has been doing to try to combat this, because, as you mentioned, you know, this goes all the way back to Hurricane Andrew in nineteen ninety two and maybe even before then. You know what kind of things have wildlife officials in Florida tried to do to stop this well, they've tried a lot of things. They are For the past several years, they've the state of Florida pays contractors to go out

and hunt the snake. These men and women get paid minimum wage, but they are paid bonuses for any snake that measures over four feet long, and these snakes get well over four feet long. The longest one on record is eighteen feet nine inches and that was just in October that was that record was set. The state is also working with the federal government to try to remove these pythons from within Everglades National Park, where usually there

is no hunting allowed. The state also encourages the public to get involved. So on your next Florida vacation, you too could come and do some python hunting. If that's your thing, I'll pass. You don't need apartment, you don't need a hunting license. You are allowed on private land to take out a python. If you come across one, you are encouraged to do so, or you can just there's an app where you can report python sightings if you just want to stay hands off. They've experimented with traps.

They tagged pythons with radio trackers so that they could follow one snake to other snakes. Hopefully. This year, Florida lawmakers passed a law allowing the Wildlife Commission to use drones to monitor the Everglades four signs of pythons and other invasive plant and animal species. They're also training dogs to sniff them out. Yeah, and you sent me some photos of some really cute dogs that are I guess,

snake hunting dogs. A very good boy named Truman, a black labrador, scored the first snake capture in that program just earlier this month. He bagged an eight foot python somewhere out in Miami Dade County. And that's that's been That's been something in the works for a while, and early iterations of the program ran into the dogs ran into the same problem that humans do in Florida. They weren't sure how to handle the humidity for long periods of time. But they seem to be overcoming that problem.

So that's that's one more, one more tool in the fight against pythons. It seems like the state is taking a kitchen sink approach to uh fighting this problem. Upon very much intended because the latest thing that they're doing is it sounds like they're Florida is trying to get restaurants and individuals to put python on the dinner plate. Can you talk about the efforts to make python meet

a delicacy in Florida. Yes. Apparently there's enough interest from people asking if it's okay to eat pythons that the state is now exploring whether they can start recommending this as a good idea. The state is now taking tish samples from pythons in seven counties, so kind of across the Greater Everglades ecosystem, just to see what kind of mercury levels they have. I always heard that you shouldn't eat pythons from the Everglades because they were just chock

full of mercury. They're at the top of the food chain and they just absorb a lot of mercury from the environment. But the state is now thinking, you know, there might be parts of South Florida where they're not absorbing so much mercury, so it might be okay to eat them, much like iguanas, which are another invasive species, or lionfish, which are another invasive fish that the state encourages people to hunt and eat. So no one's going to be ordering snake for Christmas or New Year's Dinner

this year. But it's something that they might be looking at further down the road as just another way to tell people, Hey, we have this problem. If you want to help solve it, just to order up a snake burger. I gotta say I didn't realize this was sort of a bottom up thing that people were coming to the state and saying, like, I want to eat snakes? Is it possible to do that? And the state is like, well,

let us look into that. I thought it was sort of a top down like Florida was saying please eat snakes. You know, I guess it's the other way around. Florida is definitely saying please help us get rid of these snakes. There are just potentially hundreds of thousands of them out there. They are really hard to find. They are never going to go away entirely, but this Florida wants all the

help it can get to get rid of them. There are people who take the python skins and we'll turn them into a very nice handbag for you, or a nice pair of shoes. I've seen alligator couches, so I don't know why you couldn't do that with enough python skins. You know, the state has been pretty successful with getting people to put lionfish on the menu. That would probably be the most comparable iguana. People some people me included,

don't really want to eat iguanas so much. I think python will be one of those like super specialized delicacies as well. Yeah. No, And I think that's not a like an unheard of strategy. I mean, I know that up here in the Chesapeake Bay Area, I think they've had a lot of success with that. The last thing I wanted to ask, well, the second the last thing I wanted to ask you is, let's take a step

back here and talk about you know, overall strategy. As I mentioned, or as we talked about, the state is throwing everything I can at this problem, and it just doesn't seem like it's making a lot of progress. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, But like, is this something where it seems like maybe eventually something will work, or are we talking about something where they're going to have to take like radical new measures if they really want to make a dent here, like things that we haven't

even thought of yet. It might be in the realm of things we haven't even thought of yet it's the goal with pions is just to control them as much as possible. The idea that we could ever get rid of them entirely has gone out the window years ago. But in Florida's defense, it's a really difficult problem to solve. The snakes have no predators here and they eat anything in their way, especially as they get bigger. They reproduce in large numbers, and they have The pythons have expanded

kind of throughout the Everglades ecosystem. That's not just the National Park west of Miami. It's up north into Broward and Palm Beach Counties, west into the big Cypress Preserve near Naples, And as big as they are, they're really hard to find unless you happen to come across one on a levee or a road. They tend to just blend into the landscape. And then that landscape is really hard for people to navigate through. Even though it's surrounded

by densely populated coastlines, it's mostly water. There's really sharp sawgrass that you really can't walk through, and it grows shoulder high. The Everglades are also like incredibly big. I always forget it's not just like Miami's Backyard. It's one of the largest national parks in the continental US. It is a massive ecosystem, and most of it you can't get through unless you have an air boat. So it's really it's a daunting thing for the state to have

to deal with finally closing things out. How does one cook a python? What is the optimal way to prepare a python? I would think that it would just be really stringy and tough, so you'd have to do like a braize, you know. But I could see maybe like high heat, like a saute or a stirrify. What well, if you were going to cook up python, how would you prepare it? I would just like to establish I

would not be cooking a python. You have thought about this, possibly more than I. Maybe maybe this is more about me than it is about you. No, what would you? I don't know? How how would you? How would you do it? One one of the state python hunters, Donna Khalil, posts on her Instagram some of the many ways that she's been able to cook python. It seems like putting them in some sort of slow cooker. That's what That's what I thought. That's what I thought. You really have

to tenderize it. It's kind of a tough, meaty sort of thing. Uh. You makes you realize, well, this is why people make shoes out of them and not steak. Right, It's it's the skin part that is the that's that's the stuff you want. You people really haven't looked at them as a food source previously. Apparently you can make python jerky out of them and that will sustain you on your your long python hunts through the Everglades. I guess a stew might be the best way to go.

I know, that's that's how iguanas gets served quite a bit. I mean, look, I hey, look, I've eaten steak that tasted like a shoe, so I you know, don't see why I wouldn't just eat something that basically is a shue. Jennifer Kay, thank you so much for this very Floridian discussion. I feel like I'm already in Florida right now just talking and thinking about all this stuff. Thank you very much. You're welcome. That was Bloomberg Glog correspondent Jennifer Kay speaking

to us from Miami Beach, Florida. And that's it for today's episode of Parts per Billion If you want more environmental news, check us out on Twitter. We use the handle at environment just that at environment, I'm at David B. Schultz. If you've got anything on your mind you'd like to share. Today's episode of Parts per Billion was produced by myself and Josh Block. Parts Pavilion was created by Jessica Coombs

and Rachel Daegel. The music of today's episode is a Message by Jazar and Road to Memphis by Paul Bushara and Emmanuel Jeane Bennet. They were used under a Creative Commons license. Thank you everyone for listening, See you later. This is Adam Ellington and I'm here to announce a new season of Uncommon Law, a narrative podcast series from

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