A board member from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida captured a 16-foot, 120-pound female Burmese python and a look at the math surrounding a catch like this is very revealing in the ecological fight against this invasive species wreaking havoc on south Florida.
Conservancy board member Jon Kukk and his wife Julie won a ‘python experience‘ in an auction to raise funds during last year’s RedSnook Catch & Release Charity Fishing Tournament.
They recently went out during python breeding season across Collier County with members of the Conservancy’s python team. The plan was to track down a male Burmese python named ‘Ronin’ who measures 12-feet.
Ronin has been tracked for 6+ years and has been labeled an MVP or ‘Most Valuable Python’ by the conservancy because this large male Burmese python can lead the team to large females and their nests. This, in turn, allows the field biologists to remove eggs and prevent exponential growth from occurring.
According to a 2022 release from MYFWC, a single female Burmese python can lay between 50 and 100 eggs at a time. Other sources claim females lay between 12-36 eggs at a time but that estimate seems very low as the ‘Python Cowboy’ in S.Fl captured a 16ft python last year that had 60 eggs in its belly.
Ronin has a tracker and the team used some field tech to search for him. In a release about the experience, the Conservancy described tracking a snake, saying “holding a receiver that makes the transmitter signal audible, the team closed in on Ronin as Ian Easterling said he saw a python floating on the edge of the water.” Here’s what that radio equipment looks like in the field:
As they got closer they realized the snake actually appeared larger than Ronin, quite a bit larger.
Knowing the massive Burmese python would quickly escape they pounced. Biologist Ian Bartoszek “pinned the head with his boot and reached in to grab the head, while (Ian) Easterling lunged to get additional hands on the python.”
From there, a tussle ensued with Bartoszek holding the 16-foot snake’s head with two hands. Conservancy board member Jon Kukk jumped down the bank to help and grabbed the massive python by its tail.
The snake wrapped itself around Easterling’s leg but the crew was able to wrassle it up the bank and toward their truck where they’d get measurements of 16 feet and 120 pounds. And removing this snake from Collier County is HUGE for conservation efforts.
Here is the 16-foot, 120-pound female Burmese python once it was captured:
According to the Conservancy, the “humane removal from the ecosystem will keep an additional 50 invasive pythons from hatching this season and many more over future years. To date, the team has removed over 1,200 pythons weighing over 33,000 pounds from Collier County.”
That’s 50 invasive Burmese pythons that won’t be born into South Florida this year. Burmese pythons live upwards of 20 years. The largest females can lay a hundred eggs at a time and those eggs lead to snakes that lay more and more eggs.
Removing a massive specimen like this is an incredible feat and it wouldn’t have been possible without the Conservancy of Southwest Florida who have for 10 years been working on “to better understand the behavior and ecological impact of the Burmese python.”
Last year, a 19-foot Burmese python was captured and brought to the Conservancy where it was measured and officially became the longest snake ever measured in Florida. If interested, check out that absolute specimen of a snake.