Pythons remain a huge eco problem for the Everglades, interesting strategy.
Burmese pythons are, as their name suggests, Burmese in origin. They come from Southeast Asia. But in the 1970s, they began hanging out Stateside – in Florida’s Everglades, to be exact – and in the 21st century, they became an established breeding population in the area.
That’s… bad. Even if you’re a fan of these great big slithery fellas, the effect they’ve had – and continue to have – on the local ecosystem is nothing short of devastating. Between 2003 and 2011, for example, the number of raccoons seen in areas inhabited by Burmese pythons dropped by more than 99 percent; a similar decrease was seen (or not seen, we should perhaps say) in the numbers of opossums, and bobcat numbers dropped by 87.5 percent. Rabbits – the non-robotic kind – disappeared completely.
“Twenty years ago, the [Everglades] would have been teeming with wildlife,” Mike Kirkland, senior invasive animal biologist at South Florida’s water management district, told BBC Future in 2024. “Now I challenge you to find a single deer, possum, or squirrel. They have decimated our native wildlife
