exotic invasion-o-rama...

16 years ago

we have a theme, ladies and gentlemen... from tomorrows nyt. i wonder -- do the asian pythons eat the cuban frogs?

at least for the time being, i will resist the urge to build a python house.
EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Fla. Â Skip Snow, a federal biologist in Everglades National Park, would love to spend his days monitoring the dizzying array of native wildlife across this 1.5-million-acre "river of grass" west of the ever-expanding Miami metropolis.

Lately, however, he has been spending ever more time studying the remains of the parkÂs birds and animals, extracted from the stomachs of captured or road-killed Burmese pythons, the latest Â and most spectacular Â addition to FloridaÂs growing list of biological interlopers.

Opening a packed freezer in a park laboratory, Mr. Snow sifted dated plastic bags containing fur, feathers, bones and other vestiges of recent python prey.

"WeÂve found everything, from very small mammals Â native cotton mice, native cotton rats, rabbits, squirrels, possums, raccoons, even a bobcat, most recently the hooves of a deer," Mr. Snow said. "Wading birds and water birds, pipe-billed grebes, coots, egrets, limpkins and at least one big alligator."

Here is a link that might be useful: a moveable beast...

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Comments (21)

lakeron
16 years ago
Interesting article. Pythons and now anacondas, great. Unlike our alligators who wait for prey to come to them, these babies are Hunters. Those who had qualms about killing Cuban frogs had better start thinking shotguns! Anything 8+ feet long, thick as your arm, and a head as big as your hand (this is a small one)is not a job for a shovel!
To be ecofriendly you can chop them up and plant them in your garden as fertilizer, don't know the NPK.
They are also edible. A select group in the military were known for this. Tampaart, are you listening?
ron
Nicki
16 years ago
Oye vey... what's next.

Anacondas... monitor lizards... caimen, oh my! And people look at me funny when I say I don't swim in our fresh water lakes and rivers.
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Ah..a political agenda? What kind of a political agenda would that be? Regardless, let's not get ad hominem. Useless. Let's stay on topic. If you read climate research, another kind of global change that evokes strong emotions you will rarely if every come across judgmentality. Whether warming is good or bad is not proven. you cannot do that. However: what you can prove is that global warming is antropogenic. Caused by humans. You cannot prove it is unnatural. What people think about it, is not up to a scientist. It is up to themselves. I don't like it at all and am all for action. The facts here are very clear. Within the climate research, which can be found in nature and Science, there is no doubt. The same cannot be said when it comes to invasive species. There is ample peer reviewed research, done by ecologists themselves, that shows what I say. The lithany of judgemental and value laden wording does not have any place in science, yet it is almost a constant in ecology. And it has a strong influence in the perception of people to what is simply a living organism and at times, a sentient being. I have read many scientific research on it and my point is precisely the opposite: I think most people are simply reiterarting what they have been hearing time and time again without reading on the subject. Niot from outsides, like you see in climate sience, but ecologists working in the field. What bothers me is that this ideology has all the signs of what we see in human culture. That the ideal of some system is worht more than life. That individuals have no value, have no meaning and should be killed. This also has a strong aching to what we see (and tend to fear and despise) in antisocial people, who fail to acknowledge that other people matter, have intrinsic value. That other people have rights, emotions and feelings. Hence extreme antisocial people kill people without a second thought and do not mind one bit. I have seen this been propagated in nature towards various animals. And they are sometimes killed in the most painfull way imaginable. Like the GRey Squirrel in the UK, which is killed by using warfarine so it slowly dies a painfull death from internal bleeding. An alternative is clubbing the pups and, if they ca catch thhem, their parents to death. That is what extremism and hatecampaigns can do. Another thing I have seen in Scotland when I was there and in The Netherlands is the propaganda that is genetically inspired. The Scottish Red dear, which is not a subspecies at all and is not threatened in any way worldwide, is now at the "threat" to be mixed with Sika deer. They have fertile young, which do just fine. Seem happy. Nothing is wrong. But the Scottish Landscape Trust (or what is called) says that "pure blood" Scottish Red Deer are at the verge of extinction. There is nothing wrong with the mix, the calfs are not sterile..Nope. But they have no rights and need to be killed. Wrong blood, wrong place. LEts shoot 'em... In Nl there are quite a few who want to use pure Dutch Beech trees which seeds have been selected an stored, to repopulate the country. Foreign beech trees are no good... The White Tail Duck and the Ruddy Duck have fertile offspring. They are as dissimilar as blacks and whites among people. Yet the Ruddy Duck needs to be killed, because the White Duck would be extinct. And it is unnatural. However, a passerine is naturally hybridising in Europe now. That is okey, it is nature... Now I do understand these are extremes but they are the direct result, again like we have seen in culture so many times, of the thought that nature should be pure and that bastards are no good. Foreign species are somehow worse than native species and need to be eradicated when possible or when they threat our ideal view of the world.... So to me, saying that native is somehow better than nonnative is not as innocent as it looks. I find it very strange actually. I think a species is in its place where it can survive on its own. It seems well adapted, at least for some time, to the place it now occupies. Ceertainly in times with rapid change (climate change) an inflexible attitude towards these seems not feasable. If climate change starts to shift climate zones more and more, you might end up with nothing or very little native things that can grow where they used to... Native and nonnative is a dichotomy that has no meaning in the natural world, only in human culture. It puts evberyhting in a historical context and not in a contemporary one. It seems to be aimed to freeze thing in atime (the past mostly) and on many occasions involve the killing of sentient beings on massive scales as it devaluates their lives based on their origins. and on may occasions without any sight on some final result. 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manature
16 years ago
Don't forget monitor lizards and iguanas all over from Cape Coral down (actually farther north, too, but in lower numbers). The Everglades are being overrun by these intruders. So sad!!

And Nicki...you know MY rule for swimming:

I never swim in any body of water that isn't enclosed in turquoise concrete! (and that's even without the exotics!)

Marcia
mistiaggie
16 years ago
I'm at an invasive species meeting this week with a lot of people from various agencies and Skip was there today. He got a presentation with photo's of some of the snakes they've caught. Really, completely creepy. It's scary for me because I work out there. UGH!

But in a general invasive standpoint, everyone is trying to do something. It seems like they are getting somewhere with melaleuca and it looks like the next stand will be hitting the pepper hard and lygodium. They are also releasing some weevil eating flies to work on the Mexican bromeliad weevil.
jupiterplants
16 years ago
Closer to home , I got my first glimpse of the curlytail lizard about 10 years ago in south palm beach. Didn`t take long before I was seeing them in the parking lot at work in NORTH palm beach .

I lived in fear that one would get into my van pregnant and I would bring them into the farms. When they do show up in my yard they will meet the flat side of my shovel.
mistiaggie
16 years ago
Another animal to look out for is the sacred ibis. Apparently it'll displace native birds and predate on the eggs and hatchlings. They are in the Loxahatchee and some waste dump in PB county.
treefrog_fl
16 years ago
Maybe the sacred ibis came looking for the cuban treefrogs?
As for the curlytail lizards, they're here D.
And they're pretty quick to avoid the shovel.
garyfla_gw
16 years ago
Hi
Very interesting !! Was recently reading an article on the sharp decline of both the green and yellow anacondas in Venezuela. For some reason the size and numbers has dropped drasticly over the last decade. Maybe they've all migrated to Florida??
The solution there was more money also lol.
Amazing how much it costs to leave stuff alone lol gary
jupiterplants
16 years ago
David ,

How about a pellet gun?
tampaart
16 years ago
Lizard, snake - hmmmm I love eating them all!
manature
16 years ago
"Amazing how much it costs to leave stuff alone lol gary"

Ain't it the truth, Gary! Wish that the Corps of Engineers had heard that little bit of advice decades ago!!!

Marcia
garyfla_gw
16 years ago
Marcia
Of course you realize that had they left it alone you'd be under 3 feet of water lol The thought then was to open the land for settlement produce winter crops for a hungry nation eliminate diseases and have alternative land uses.
I guess we no longer need these things ??
But for only a few billion it can be turned back into a
" a vast uninhabitable wasteland for alligators ,tropical diseases and rather useless vegetation" Early land survey report on whether it was worth the expense to root out the Indians lol
I don't know about you but 3 feet of water in my living room is a downer lol. gary
treefrog_fl
16 years ago
Hahaha, I don't think most South Floridians today would take to living in stilt houses and paddling canoes around.
Especially with all those pythons and anacondas!
But if Global Warming does come into play in the future, many coastal populations around the world better have a plan.
manature
16 years ago
This time, I disagree with you, Gary. There are areas of Florida that should never have been developed, in my opinion, but me, I'm on a bit of a ridge that hasn't been under water since Florida rose to its current dizzying height above sea level. The area where we are was a better candidate for developement than many in the state.

As for turning back the clock at great expense, that is exactly what they are trying to do with the Kissimmee River debacle. They straightened out a meandering river that served as a biological filter for our water system and a vast tract of land rich with wildlife, made a canal that was disasterous, and are doing all they can to put it back again. In my opinion, it should never have been done to begin with. It may have made it possible for a lot of subdivisions to be built, but it was an ecological disaster. The same can be said for many of the well-meaning but poorly conceived projects around the state.

Florida has always sold itself to the highest bidder, regardless of the right or wrong way to go about it.

Again, just my personal opinion (well, and that of quite a few other people I know who have studied this stuff...yes, environmentalists and Audubon folk, but that doesn't necessarily make them wrong.)

No, I don't want 3 feet of water in my living room, but there was a way to do it right so that my living room would not have been built where the water flows. It's just like building on a flood plain in any state. Do it, and you'll pay the consequences one day. Impact studies are a better approach, I believe, and a good way to understand which areas should not be used for housing tracts or any other type of development.

Going off to hug a tree, now. (Still with ya on the pollution caused by St. Augustine lawns, though.)

Marcia
hmp2z
16 years ago
Marcia, I'm with you! There is actually a very good documentary on PBS that follows the really amazing devastation that we've done by draining south Florida to make room for massive developments, and it mentions how the Corps of Engineers is having to "correct" their mistakes now, in part, by - you guessed it - putting the Kissimmee River back the way it was supposed to be.

I think that every Floridian should get informed about ways in which they are responsible for polluting the environment, so that they can acknowledge the impact and take measures to reduce it.

If anyone is interested in the documentary, it's called Water's Journey: Everglades. Very, very enlightening.

And, to be honest, the vast majority of that drained land is not being used to grow crops for the rest of the country. The documentary mentions how much of the farmland has been sold to big developers. Most of the pollution, too, comes from yards, not the farms themselves.

Cheers!
Heather W
coffeemom
16 years ago
Is "Big Sugar" considered an invasive exotic?
mistiaggie
16 years ago
I don't think people understand the severity of the impacts the canals had on Florida and continue to have. The inability to regulate the water flow and provide for the entire ecosystem is a constant battle. Too high in some areas and you flood the deer out. Too low you lose plant life in the slough's. Some area's weren't meant to be built. South Florida was one of them. I've been meaning to read The Swamp because it goes into more details of the history of the Everglades. Did you know that there used to be snook runs that crossed Florida? Disrupting the New River and Miami River and all of those slough's just ruined many populations of everything. Sorry, Gary, I gotta disagree with you.
garyfla_gw
16 years ago
HI
Well I try to avoid being political but we constantly get bombarded with ecological "news' that is supposed to be "facts" lol
misiaggie You can't disagree with me I have no opinion lol
Decisions were made in the past with certain goals based on certain priorities with a given set of knowledge .
But just a slight look at Florida history would show that almost nothing happened until these projects were undertaken . If they had not been done two thirds of the state would be uninhabitable.
After all Florida already has more land set aside than any state in the union.
I get rather upset when i read about the plight of animals and plants in a given region and not one word about the "people"
I'm very grateful that I'm an old man and won't live long enough to see the answers the worlds problems.
Even more grateful that my opinion doesn't matter lol
gary
coffeemom
16 years ago
Well here's an opinion from an old woman. "creak"
I too have pretty much given up on me having a world impact or having the gov't make things right. I can however control what impact I have and I'm content with that. I choose to enjoy my garden,conserve water, love plants, hate iquanas and rats, brake for turtles,fellowship with other gardeners and eat as much of Ricky's pulled pork as I possibly can.
manature
16 years ago
Well, Gary, you have pretty much made my point for me. "Nothing much happened until these projects were undertaken." Meaning that before those projects were undertaken, no overdevelopment was underway, no rampant, unchecked growth, no overcrowding, no overpaving, no serious strain on the aquifer and no real threat to the creatures who were here before us. I agree that's true. And I wish the rush to develop Florida had been handled in such a way that those conditions were still prevalent in many more areas of the state.

In my opinion, there are WAY too many people jammed into Florida today, and what has made that possible is the complete lack of foresight and planning. I don't really want to get "political" per se, either, and I agree that at this point we can't turn the clock back and undo very many of the things that were done in well-meaning but ill-advised this planet refforts to grow, grow, grow. But for me, Life on earth really ISN'T "all about people." I believe we are supposed to fit INTO the grand scheme of things on the planet, rather than tromp roughshod over it all, with no regard for other living creatures and their habitats.

In other words, the more I learn about humans, the more I like animals. ;o)

But truthfully, I'm willing to compromise. I know we are here to stay. I just feel we should each do our part, as best we can, to at LEAST not make things worse. And at best, to undo some of the disasterous money-making, land-grabbing, swamp-draining, canal-digging mistakes of the past. Some of those mistakes were made due to the expansionist ideas at that time in history, and some were made out of sheer greed and total disregard for anything or anyONE coming later. It's incumbent upon US today to try to decide which of these problems can be addressed and possibly corrected, and which we just have to learn to live with. We have to pick our battles wisely and try to do a better job of planning for future generations of both people and wildlife.

Again, these are just my own personal thoughts on the matter, and not meant to start any kind of argument. But in my book, these three things are true: ecology is not a bad word, extremism on either side of the issue is counter productuve, and there should be plenty of middle ground to be explored when dealing with these issues.

Marcia
manature
16 years ago
Sorry...wish we could edit posts here.

Second paragraph, 3rd line should read
"well-meaning, but ill-advised efforts to grow, grow, grow"

Marcia

exotic invasion-o-rama...

Comments (21)

lakeron

Nicki

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