Project Hopper<\/a>, a research initiative focused on removing Burmese pythons from the Everglades.<\/p>\n“There’s no doubt. They are spreading,” McCleery said. However, he believes the bigger concern is the impact they are already having on the ecosystem.<\/p>\n
“From my research, it’s not that they’re spreading, it’s that their impacts are spreading. And we can show, iteratively over time, the loss of mammals on the northern extent of where their range is, south of Loxahatchee and the Big Cypress area,” McCleery explained.<\/p>\n
Pythons can remain in the water for extended periods, and according to Hernandez, they often use waterways and canals to travel.<\/p>\n
“This animal lives 95% of its life in water. And in Florida, we are surrounded by water. Of course they’re going to migrate,” Hernandez said.<\/p>\n
He believes one of the main reasons the snakes are moving is the lack of available prey in South Florida, where they have significantly reduced mammal populations.<\/p>\n
“We’re running out of food for them here. Ninety-five percent of all mammals have been eaten by them.”<\/p>\n
To help prevent the species from spreading farther north, researchers like McCleery are focusing not only on removing pythons from areas where they are already well established, but also on detecting and eliminating them in counties like Palm Beach before populations become more difficult to control.<\/p>\n
“If we can say, ‘Hey, this is where we draw the line,’ and use technologies for early detection, early warning, and rapid response, we’re going to get a lot more bang for our buck in controlling this problem than trying to go back into the heart of the infestation while the pythons are still spreading northward,” McCleery said.<\/p>\n
However, expanding those research and response efforts requires additional funding. That’s why McCleery and his team are working to raise $250,000 to continue expanding Project Hopper<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the invasive species has long been established in South Florida, new evidence suggests the snakes are, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12688,3879,110435,28,30,29,4624],"class_list":["post-347763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-burmese-pythons","tag-everglades","tag-everglades-national-park","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}