Dense wetland, mud, grass and dark waterways all around, with huge snakes possibly hiding at every step. In these fearsome surroundings Tom Rahill hunted for 10 days straight, with a single aim: to protect Florida's nature.

In the end he caught 96 Burmese pythons and won this year's Florida Python Challenge.

Rahill won the annual Florida Python Challenge held in Everglades National Park in the US state of Florida, taking a prize of US$10,000, more than Tk 12 lakh in Bangladeshi money. This year 907 people took part, from 30 US states as well as Canada and Vietnam.

Rahill is a python hunter by profession. In Broward County, Florida, he founded an organisation called Swamp Apes, which takes military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) python hunting in the wetlands.

Rahill said he was on a mission to help a veteran catch a large python. After achieving that, he went deeper, and from there managed to catch 96 pythons.

In all, 280 Burmese pythons were removed during the 10-day competition in July. About 1,400 pythons had already been removed this year before the contest began.

The state also gives a separate prize for the longest python. This year Rahm Levinson won $1,000 for catching a python 16 feet 5 inches long.

Burmese pythons are native to South-East Asia. They were first found in the Everglades in the 1990s and have since become a major threat to the local ecosystem, preying on native mammals, birds and other animals and seriously upsetting the food chain.

Experts estimate that several thousand Burmese pythons may now live in the Everglades. A female can lay up to about 100 eggs a year, so their numbers are growing fast.

The Florida Python Challenge is not just about catching snakes. It also aims to raise public awareness of invasive animals and involve ordinary people in protecting the Everglades' biodiversity.

Since 2017, more than 1,600 Burmese pythons have been removed through the competition. Counting the year-round work of Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission contractors, more than 19,000 pythons have been removed since 2017.

Sarah Funck, programme coordinator at the commission, said there is no single solution to Florida's python problem, but removing even one python is an important success for conserving native wildlife.

The report drew on The Guardian.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.