<\/p>\n
“We’re just fighting the fight to make it not get worse,” Taylor Stanberry said.<\/p>\n
However, last year’s winner Stanberry is seeing some improvement.<\/p>\n
“I’m seeing more native wildlife again, so I do think it is helping in certain areas,” Stanberry said.<\/p>\n
The hot zone is still South Florida. Reports outside the core range are raising questions about how far the watch zone may need to go.<\/p>\n
Dolan met python contractor Carl Jackson after he caught a 202-pound snake. Jackson says if the snakes are showing up outside the line, the search area may need to move with them.<\/p>\n
“We need to watch them closely, and I think they need to give us a little more area to hunt as well, because they are getting out of the area,” Jackson said.<\/p>\n
Removing 294 pythons in last year’s challenge isn’t nothing, but against an unknown population that could be in the tens of thousands, it raises the harder question: How much impact can one challenge really have?<\/p>\n
“It does matter, but taking the Python moms, the females, big females, out of the equation helps immensely, because one female can equivalent thousands of babies,” Jackson said.<\/p>\n
“I would definitely say it is highly a publicity thing,” Stanberry said. “But it definitely helps bringing people here to be able to experience Everglades, enjoy the Everglades, and if they can remove a python while they’re doing it, that is a bonus.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Python Challenge starts July 10. The python hot zone is still in the Everglades, but reported sightings in Charlotte County and further north are part of the bigger concern.<\/p>\n
The question isn’t whether one challenge can catch them all. It’s whether Florida can find the next problem area before it grows.<\/p>\n
The bigger test is year-round: find them, report them and stop the spread before it moves farther north. That’s why the work continues\u2014not because victory is inevitable, but because the alternative is surrender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE COUNTY, Fla. (WINK)\u2014Florida is spending billions to restore the Everglades, but restoring the water is only part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[282253,79186,6559,182572,2808,41480,79,201],"class_list":["post-654368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-burmese-pythons-in-florida","tag-charlotte-county","tag-everglades","tag-fish-and-wildlife-conservation-commission","tag-florida","tag-python","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}