Florida pays people to hunt an invasive snake that has helped wipe out much of the Everglades’ native mammal population. But new research suggests native predators may already be doing part of that job on their own. So which approach actually solves the problem — paying humans to compete for a bounty, or working to strengthen the wild predators already pushing back?
Burmese pythons are not native to Florida — most researchers trace the wild population back to escaped and released pets that established themselves in the Everglades starting in the late 20th century. With no natural predators and an environment that suits them well, they have since preyed heavily on native mammals in the region.
Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and partner agencies responded with public removal programs — paid contractor hunts and open contests such as the Florida Python Challenge — that reward hunters for pythons captured and euthanized.
More recently, one native predator in particular has been documented turning on pythons directly — at two different life stages. Bobcats have been caught on trail camera raiding python nests, eating the eggs before they hatch (a peer-reviewed 2022 finding). Separately, in a widely-reported December 2022 case, biologist Ian Bartoszek of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida found one of the program’s own radio-tagged “scout” pythons dead near Naples — a 13-foot adult, decapitated, with the kill attributed to a bobcat.
Worth noting precisely because it cuts the other way: coyotes do not appear to be part of this story as python predators — if anything, published research points the opposite direction, showing pythons preying on and outcompeting coyotes for food in heavily-infested areas.
Point — bounty contests are the better strategy
Scale, now. A public contest recruits far more searching hours in a single season than any predator-partnership program could hope to influence in the same timeframe — pythons are actively removed today, not eventually.
Verifiable results. Every python turned in under a bounty program is a countable, confirmed removal.
It funds itself and the cause. Contest visibility keeps Everglades restoration funded and in the public eye in a way a quiet, agency-run predator study never would.
Counterpoint — predator partnerships are the better long-term strategy
A contest can’t outlast its funding; a healthy predator population can. A bobcat taking down a 13-foot adult python — on top of already raiding python nests for eggs — is a predator working at both ends of the python’s life cycle, something no bounty contest is positioned to do.
Contests may be solving the wrong scale of the problem. Because pythons are cryptic and mostly nocturnal, some researchers argue public contests remove only a small fraction of the real population.
Sources
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — Python removal program
Live Science — bobcat decapitates 13-foot python
Bobcat/python nest-predation study, Ecology and Evolution
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