Still, such species tend to become a priority only after the fact, biologists say. It was not until this year that a new Florida law established a list of six "reptiles of concern" (including the python). The state will soon require US$100-a-year owners' permits and the insertion of identifying microchips under the skin of the purchased pets.
This year, the South Florida Water Management District petitioned the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to add Burmese pythons to a list of "injurious wildlife" maintained under the 107-year-old Lacey Act.
David Lodge, the director of the Center for Aquatic Conservation at the University of Notre Dame, has been an author on a series of recent studies of the issue, including a position paper last year from the Ecological Society of America pressing for much stronger federal investment and action.
"When it comes to importing live organisms, our policies are entirely reactive," Lodge said. "It's as if in the drug realm we were to allow any new drug or food product on the market until it kills someone and then consider a regulation to ban it."
With invasive species, though, the situation is actually potentially worse, he said, because banning them after the fact does not eliminate the threat.
As Snow put it, "Invasives are the gift that keeps on giving, because of the biological imperative to reproduce."
While Snow is hunting whatever pythons he can find and pushing for new laws and more money for preventive programs, he is also working at the grassroots level.
In frequent slide presentations to community groups, he pulls no punches, describing how the snakes seize prey with small sharp teeth and suffocate it with muscular coils. There are several recorded deaths of pet owners in the US strangled or suffocated by pythons.
One slide says: "Do you really want a snake that may grow more than 6m long or weigh 90kg, urinate and defecate like a horse, live more than 25 years and for whom you will have to kill mice, rats and, eventually, rabbits?"
RSS