The Team.

Our team is comprised of four individuals who have no connection to herpetology or invasive species studies. It consists of a nurse, a businesswoman, and two members with an IT background. What all the team members brought to the table was a natural curiosity and the ability to think outside the box. The team had yet to learn how far outside the box it would have to think to develop a viable solution, and as it turned out, it was not too far.

​

We immediately realized that, as USGS reported, and people working on the problem already knew, population reduction was a train that had already left the station. Despite technical approaches like scout pythons and efforts by the South Florida Water District Python Elimination Program, finding a management approach to reverse python population growth has remained elusive. Look at the graphs on that SFWD page and see that the total number of pythons removed since program startup in 2017 is approaching 8,000.  The population estimates are all over the place because they are elusive and hard to see. The numbers range from 300,000 to 1 million.

​

Team members had access to and read hundreds of scientific articles on the problem, the species, and various attempts to control the population growth. Burmese pythons in Florida: A synthesis of biology, impacts, and management tools is among the best publications on the Burmese Python.  It covers various topics and contains links to deeper-dive scientific publications on which it is based.​

​ 

After seven months reading an a constant flow of ideas, many worse that the one before, the team had an epiphany.  We had to leverage the instincts and behaviour of the species.