Whoever Kills The Most Burmese Pythons In Florida Wins A Cash Prize
Burmese Python Wikimedia CommonsA mass animal-hunting contest that actually, well, makes sense. This weekend, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission kicked off the 2013 Python Challenge in Davie, Florida, a smallish city near Fort Lauderdale. The Python Challenge registers python hunters and gives cash prizes to those who can gather the most--or the biggest--pythons. As much as it's weird to award people for killing the most snakes, this is absolutely the right move for Florida--unlike Wyoming's stance on wolves. Burmese pythons, native to southeast Asia, are massive constrictors, reaching up to 17 feet long. They were brought to Florida as pets and either escaped or were released into the wild, and found themselves an environment totally unprepared for them. South Florida, especially the area in and around the Everglades, is home to an astounding number of rare and vanishing plants and animals, vanishing faster due to an all-out frontal environmental...