Throughout Florida’s annual Python Problem, a trio of newbie python hunters stumbled throughout a 17-foot python mendacity in the course of the street. One of many hunters, Joshua Laquis, says it may be the longest snake ever discovered by amateurs within the state.
That is the second 12 months Laquis, a enterprise administration scholar at Rollins Faculty, has hunted pythons. Though Laquis is just not an formally registered participant within the 2022 problem in response to Laquis himself and FWC officers, pythons could also be taken year-round in Florida. Laquis and his looking buddies caught it inside days of the state’s annual competitors. The Python Problem is a particular occasion designed to boost consciousness over the state’s invasive Burmese python downside, in addition to eradicate snakes. Researchers just lately uncovered the biggest Burmese python up to now this 12 months, a big feminine measuring 17 ft, 7 inches. Beforehand, the largest snake Laquis caught was seven ft lengthy.
“I’m all the time searching for excessive stuff to do whether or not or not it’s skydiving or paragliding,” Laquis advised Outside Life. “After I heard that they had a species as massive because the Burmese python, I assumed it’d be a cool concept to see if we might go and discover one.”
Laquis managed to find a record-setting Burmese python on August 5. And he did it with the assistance of two fellow snake hunters he met on Instagram.
“I used to be alleged to go along with pals, however that didn’t work out,” says Laquis. That left the Trinidad native scrambling as he had already pushed 4 hours from Winter Park to the Everglades with python looking in thoughts. Fortuitously, after a number of hours on Instagram, he was in a position to find two others involved in doing the identical factor who had been already within the space: Jake Waleri and Stephen Gauta of Glades Boys Python Adventures.
The trio jumped in a truck and began cruising down U.S. Freeway 41, “shining mild into the bushes to see if we might see something coming out of the bushes.” They had been on the cusp of the Everglade Nationwide Forest once they occurred upon the monster snake.
“It was actually on the street,” says Laquis, who was shocked by the dimensions of the snake. He advised Click on Orlando, “All of us screamed. All of us hunted snakes earlier than, however none of us have seen something this measurement … One thing this massive was unbelievable to see.”
The hunters saved the useless snake in a cooler with ice till the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee was in a position to formally measure it two days later. Whereas Laquis’ preliminary measurement was 17 ft, 10 inches, the official measurement was 17 ft, 2 inches, which he chalked as much as storage. Regardless, it surpassed final 12 months’s file by over two ft.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Fee holds the Florida Python Problem annually, which presents prize cash for probably the most pythons captured and the longest snake. Final 12 months’s first-prize winner captured 41 pythons, and the $1,500 prize for longest snake went to somebody who bagged a snake over 15 ft lengthy. All advised, occasion contributors eliminated 223 invasive pythons in 2021. The occasion attracts a whole bunch {of professional} snake hunters to the world and, as of Friday, greater than 850 folks had registered to take part on this 12 months’s problem.
The Problem has skilled and newbie divisions, with grand prizes of $2,500 apiece going to whoever catches probably the most pythons in every division. The 2022 Python Problem stays open till 5 p.m. on August 14.
Florida’s Invasive Python Drawback
Burmese pythons are a serious downside in south Florida and are one of many worst invasive species within the Everglades Nationwide Park, in response to the U.S. Geological Service. Not solely do these large snakes compete with native wildlife for meals, however extreme declines in native species are linked to those invasive vertebrates. As an example, a USGS research carried out in 2012 discovered that raccoon numbers decreased by 99.3 %, opossums by 98.9 %, and bobcats by 87.5 % since 1997. Different mammals like marsh rabbits, cottontail rabbits and foxes have “successfully disappeared” from the Everglades—due to the Burmese python.
The snakes, which might develop as much as 20 ft lengthy, are native to southeast Asia and had been introduced over as pets within the Nineteen Nineties. There are over 100,000 within the Sunshine State, and so they preserve multiplying.
