Florida’s python invasion was followed by a huge drop in native mammals

For years, the Everglades was known for its tangled wetlands, alligators and an abundance of smaller mammals moving through the vegetation. Then an animal from south-east Asia began spreading through the marshes. Burmese pythons, most likely introduced through the pet trade, have established a breeding population in southern Florida and now occupy large parts of the Everglades. Their presence has coincided with an extraordinary change in some native mammal populations. Raccoons, opossums and bobcats have become far less common in areas where the snakes have been established for the longest time, while rabbits have virtually disappeared from some surveys.As reported by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a study based on more than 35,000 miles of surveys recorded declines of 99.3% in raccoons, 98.9% in opossums and 87.5% in bobcats since the late 1990s. The figures offer a glimpse of how one introduced predator has altered an entire wildlife community.How Burmese pythons invaded themselves in FloridaBurmese pythons come from south-east Asia, thousands of miles from the sawgrass marshes and mangrove edges of southern Florida. Their arrival in the Everglade...