I'm the biggest animal lover on the planet and I hate the thought of these guys having to be killed, but I can think of zero other workable solutions to save the rest of the animals in the everglades. The only real problem here is my fear of what other species will be blown away in the python hunt.

How is it crazy? Pythons are a problem and this is the best way to go about it.

Supes: Verdelak: I'm the biggest animal lover on the planet and I hate the thought of these guys having to be killed, but I can think of zero other workable solutions to save the rest of the animals in the everglades. The only real problem here is my fear of what other species will be blown away in the python hunt.

Except it won't solve anything. There are (at minimum) 10,000+ pythons in the Everglades. Possibly far, far more (according to the article some estimate "hundreds of thousands). And how many were killed the first two days of a month long hunt? 11 of them. Even if they quadruple the kill rate, there would still be under 700 killed total. Barely the smallest dent in the problem.

This hunt poses a huge risk to the natural wildlife to basically put a tiny bandage on a giant, gushing, bloody gunshot would. It's ridiculous.

You are right about the hunt barely making a dent in the population of the snakes.
But the hunt is about more than just the numbers. They are using it to gather data about the snakes. It really was never about the numbers alone. Hopefully they will get a better understanding of the habitats that the snakes are living in and be able to formulate a plan that will have an effect. Seems the science part of all the media attention is getting over looked.
Blood and killing are sexy and it sells. Science, not so much.

The best way to stop pythons that have gotten out of hand:

Supes: The risk is 800+ mostly untrained hunters traipsing through the Everglades, with loaded guns, ready to shoot anything that moves.

That is why, every hunting season, when millions of mostly untrained hunters are traipsing through the woods with loaded guns, ready to shoot anything that moves, there are hundreds of thousands of people shot by accident.

Or not.

Contrary to your uninformed opinion, hunters do not shoot at "anything that moves".

Why don't they just send in a pack of honey badgers?

/they go to great lengths to kill and eat snakes
//they're nasty
///and they don't give a fark

I hope it isn't the 24 inch pythons!

'Bed Full of Pythons' is the name of my White Snake tribute band.

BarkingUnicorn: What is the "huge risk to the natural wildlife?"

Is there another way to eradicate pythons, or is it too late?

The risk is 800+ mostly untrained hunters traipsing through the Everglades, with loaded guns, ready to shoot anything that moves.

The sad part is, I agree this is a huge problem, and to be frank there really is no good way to eradicate the pythons. But a smaller, highly trained group of people operating on a longer time scale (maybe year-round, permanently) would be more effective and have less potential to cause harm. Still wouldn't solve the problem though.... there simply is no silver bullet.

This is the best application of redneck blood lust ever. Can't wait to see the Discovery Channel series that comes out of this one. Seriously. This invasive species needs to go away and we finally found folks daring enough to do the job. Good on these guys for heading into the swamps to take care of this. No way in hell would I want to go snake hunting like that.

Verdelak: I'm the biggest animal lover on the planet and I hate the thought of these guys having to be killed, but I can think of zero other workable solutions to save the rest of the animals in the everglades. The only real problem here is my fear of what other species will be blown away in the python hunt.

Except it won't solve anything. There are (at minimum) 10,000+ pythons in the Everglades. Possibly far, far more (according to the article some estimate "hundreds of thousands). And how many were killed the first two days of a month long hunt? 11 of them. Even if they quadruple the kill rate, there would still be under 700 killed total. Barely the smallest dent in the problem.

This hunt poses a huge risk to the natural wildlife to basically put a tiny bandage on a giant, gushing, bloody gunshot would. It's ridiculous.

WTF Indeed: How is it crazy? Pythons are a problem and this is the best way to go about it.

Seems like one could consider switching back to Javascript.

/but "hello world" is just print 'hello world'!

I'm sure his congressional aides would love to kill snakes for him to pose with after the hunt.