Can You Make a Living Hunting Pythons? We Asked Florida’s Invasive Snake Contractors

Florida couple Christina Kraus and Aaron Mann captured 87 invasive pythons from the Everglades in July, setting that month’s file and netting them 1000’s of {dollars} in payouts for serving to take away the invasive reptiles.

As a part of Florida’s Python Elimination Program, the South Florida Water Administration District and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee pays python-hunting contractors $50 per snake as much as 4 ft lengthy, then $25 per foot after that. So, for instance, catching a 10-foot python underneath this system will internet a contractor $200 for that snake.

If a contractor finds a verified lively nest, that earns one other $200. However even for those who don’t discover pythons, you’ll nonetheless earn hourly wages — between $18 and $30 per hour — for looking.

Add all that up, and Mann and Kraus say they’re not removed from paying their payments as skilled python hunters. Along with their hourly wages for July (they estimate they labored upwards of 180 hours that month), their 87-snake whole included a nest with 33 hatchlings every about 2 ft lengthy, and a whopping 14-foot python (value $300) that weighed 92 kilos. In the event you catch extra pythons than every other contractor in a month, this system additionally pays out a $1,000 bonus.

However all these {dollars} include a number of large caveats: Looking invasive pythons, together with the huge Burmese python, within the Everglades is harmful — largely alligators flipping boats and GPS items going haywire — and rattling laborious work.

“You don’t get one each time,” says Kraus, who was born and raised in Naples. “You possibly go on the market 50 occasions and also you don’t see something.”

Hourly wages assist cushion the time contractors like Kraus and Mann spend driving round searching for pythons. This system pays both $13, $18, or $30 per hour relying on the realm you’re looking, with a cap of 10 hours per day. Solely designated areas rely, and people greater charges are paid out for higher-priority areas.

“It’s positively unrealistic for somebody to simply come to Florida and assume they’ll make a residing doing this,” says Mann.

Kraus and Mann began looking pythons about 5 years in the past, after studying information tales concerning the toll invasive snakes tackle native species within the Everglades together with small mammals, panthers, raptors, bobcats, marsh birds, native snakes and even deer. They figured they may assist.

In order that they outfitted their Ford F-150 with a 9-foot platform. It permits one particular person to scan the marshland for pythons on muggy summer season nights whereas the opposite drives — and scans the bottom and guardrails the place pythons usually hunt. The couple additionally has a jon boat they use for winding via alligator-filled canals. Three years after they started looking on their very own, the state and water administration district employed them as skilled contractors.

The Python Elimination Program’s most well-known occasion is the annual Florida Python Problem, which drew greater than 900 folks to the Everglades for a 10-day interval in July. Taking part hunters (and quite a lot of aspiring hunters) eliminated 294 pythons, vying for a $10,000 pot that goes to the hunter with probably the most snakes.

Nonetheless, contractors are those making the most important general dent within the python inhabitants, say Kraus and Mann. In actual fact, contractors have eliminated greater than 16,000 pythons from the Everglades since 2017, in keeping with Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee. The couple solely caught a number of snakes the primary 12 months or two after they began. Within the final two years, nevertheless, they’ve captured and eliminated greater than 200 pythons. Whereas Kraus didn’t define precisely how a lot the crew earned in July, she did estimate they looked for snakes between 4 to six hours each single evening, for a complete near 180 hours.

Taylor Stanberry won this year’s Challenge with 60 pythons. She and her husband have been skilled contractors for the higher a part of the final decade.

Stanberry estimates she’s caught greater than 1,000 invasive snakes since she began, however nonetheless runs a wildlife sanctuary as her day job. To her, python looking is seasonal — it’s busy in the summertime throughout breeding and when the snakes are transferring extra, then it dries up within the winter. Despite the fact that she and her husband hunt utilizing their boat and e-bikes as a lot as attainable, they’ve already put 100,000 miles on their Subaru within the final two years looking invasive snakes.

“Within the winter, they aren’t transferring round as a lot,” says Stanberry. “You can get breeding balls the place there could be 5 males on one feminine. I haven’t gotten that but, however that might be a great day.”

Learn Subsequent: 19 Weird and Wild Snake Photos from the Florida Python Challenge

Whereas the cash is nice to have, the contractors say, their motivations largely deal with the general mission of eradicating pythons and serving to Florida’s native species.

“In sure areas the place their inhabitants hasn’t grown as large, I’ve observed extra native wildlife popping out, so I do assume it’s working in sure areas however not in all places,” Stanberry says. “However each python we get out is consuming one much less animal.”