Nature may be the only hope for rescuing the Florida Everglades from ecological catastrophe precipitated by human beings.
The roots of the problem are Floridians who became disenchanted with their pet Burmese pythons and chose to get rid of them by releasing the snakes into the wild. In doing so, the owners let the reptilian "genie out of the bottle" and into the Everglades where the creatures quickly multiplied and overran the ecosystem.
Non-native to Florida, the pythons have no natural enemies to put a crimp in their prodigious reproductive rate (females can carry as many as a 100 eggs at a time). In fact, the snakes proliferate so rapidly that they have overwhelmed authorities' belated efforts to avert the population explosion. Human beings have essentially been rendered helpless by the snake's fecundity. All attempts to remove the snakes from world-famous Everglades National Park (including bounty hunts and promotions to market the creatures as a source of food and decorative skins) have failed. Only several thousand pythons -which can grow to 18 feet in length--have been removed from the region, which is estimated to hold at least 150,000 of the reptiles. The ecological consequences have been devastating. Pythons are voracious eaters, decimating the deer, rabbits, birds and other wildlife native to the Everglades, and thus setting the stage for an ecological wasteland.
How could nature check the python population explosion where man cannot? Nature has a way of regulating population imbalances between predators and prey. As prey become scarcer, predator populations tend to contract in correlation because of a lack of food sources. An equilibrium is established through a Darwinian natural selection process in which only the fittest of the hunters and hunted survive.
A problem arises if the prey have been reduced to such low levels that there are not enough left to regenerate a sustainable recovery, even if predator ranks thin. In that case, both the native wildlife and most of the python population could eventually be doomed, with the niche filled by who knows what.
Nature also has other ways of checking population imbalances. Climate can be a limiting factor as numerous pythons in the past have perished in a cold snap. That ordinarily would dictate against a mass northward migration of the snakes into Georgia and the Carolinas. But global warming might remove that barrier.
Another way nature has trimmed predators' ranks is to introduce a parasite or virus that is lethal only to the target species. (This might even be a way mankind could exert some control if scientists in the lab could develop some micro-organism fatal exclusively to the pythons).
Over time, depleted prey can often acquire skills to make them harder marks for their enemies, but will enough survivors be left to reconstitute a viable population?
These are the dangers--often unintended consequences--of human beings unleashing invasive species into the environment.
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The roots of the problem are Floridians who became disenchanted with their pet Burmese pythons and chose to get rid of them by releasing the snakes into the wild. In doing so, the owners let the reptilian "genie out of the bottle" and into the Everglades where the creatures quickly multiplied and overran the ecosystem.
Non-native to Florida, the pythons have no natural enemies to put a crimp in their prodigious reproductive rate (females can carry as many as a 100 eggs at a time). In fact, the snakes proliferate so rapidly that they have overwhelmed authorities' belated efforts to avert the population explosion. Human beings have essentially been rendered helpless by the snake's fecundity. All attempts to remove the snakes from world-famous Everglades National Park (including bounty hunts and promotions to market the creatures as a source of food and decorative skins) have failed. Only several thousand pythons -which can grow to 18 feet in length--have been removed from the region, which is estimated to hold at least 150,000 of the reptiles. The ecological consequences have been devastating. Pythons are voracious eaters, decimating the deer, rabbits, birds and other wildlife native to the Everglades, and thus setting the stage for an ecological wasteland.
How could nature check the python population explosion where man cannot? Nature has a way of regulating population imbalances between predators and prey. As prey become scarcer, predator populations tend to contract in correlation because of a lack of food sources. An equilibrium is established through a Darwinian natural selection process in which only the fittest of the hunters and hunted survive.
A problem arises if the prey have been reduced to such low levels that there are not enough left to regenerate a sustainable recovery, even if predator ranks thin. In that case, both the native wildlife and most of the python population could eventually be doomed, with the niche filled by who knows what.
Nature also has other ways of checking population imbalances. Climate can be a limiting factor as numerous pythons in the past have perished in a cold snap. That ordinarily would dictate against a mass northward migration of the snakes into Georgia and the Carolinas. But global warming might remove that barrier.
Another way nature has trimmed predators' ranks is to introduce a parasite or virus that is lethal only to the target species. (This might even be a way mankind could exert some control if scientists in the lab could develop some micro-organism fatal exclusively to the pythons).
Over time, depleted prey can often acquire skills to make them harder marks for their enemies, but will enough survivors be left to reconstitute a viable population?
These are the dangers--often unintended consequences--of human beings unleashing invasive species into the environment.
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