A month-long hunt for invasive Burmese pythons in Florida’s Everglades didn’t result in much of a haul, but scientists and outdoors experts say the data collected will be invaluable.

By CHARLES RABIN

crabin@miamiherald.com

“The data we’ll get will be unbelievable,” he said.

Ever fearful that Florida isn’t seen as insane enough, the state has invited the gun-toting world to come here and blast a python.

Would you like to make some extra money, and at the same time run the risk of being eaten by a carnivorous reptile the size of a war canoe?

If your answer is “yes,” I have an exciting opportunity for you. It’s called the Python Challenge, and I am not making it up. It’s a real event that was dreamed up by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which apparently was concerned that Florida does not seem insane enough to people in normal states.

The Python Challenge is a month-long contest; its purpose, according to the official website (pythonchallenge.org) is “to raise public awareness about Burmese pythons.”

Q. What do they mean by “raise public awareness about?”

A. They mean “kill.”

The contest is open to anybody who registers, pays a $25 fee and takes an online training course; so far about 400 people have signed up. These people have from Jan. 12 through Feb. 10 to go out in the Everglades and raise public awareness on as many pythons as they can. There’s a $1,500 prize for whoever kills the most pythons, a $1,000 prize for whoever kills the longest python, and a $500 prize for whoever kills the python with the best personality.

I’m kidding about that last prize, of course. Burmese pythons do not have personalities: All they do is eat and destroy the ecosystem. They are the teenage males of the animal kingdom. That’s why the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is trying to get rid of them.

Be advised, however, that you cannot kill these pythons any old way you want. No, sir: This is an official state-sponsored event, and if there is one word that comes to mind whenever you hear the name “Florida,” that word is “ethics.” The Python Challenge guidelines clearly state that you have — this is an actual quote — “an ethical obligation to ensure a Burmese python is killed in a humane manner.” That means you cannot kill your python using cruel and inhumane methods such as forcing it to watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo until it commits suicide, or placing it at the entrance to a Boca Raton restaurant just as the Early Bird special begins, where it would be trampled to death in seconds.

So how do you ethically kill a Burmese python? According to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, you can use a device called a “captive bolt,” or you can shoot it in the head with a firearm of “a safe, but effective caliber.” (Got that? You want your caliber to be safe, but also effective.)

You are also permitted to whack off the python’s head with a machete, provided you do so in an ethical manner. To quote the commission: “Make sure your technique results in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the Burmese python’s brain.” (If you think I’m making any of this up, I urge you to go read the Python Challenge guidelines.)

One thing the guidelines are not very specific about is how you’re supposed to catch the python in the first place. I happen to have some experience in this area. A few years ago, I captured a snake that somehow got into my office and onto my desk, despite the fact that I live in Coral Gables, where snakes are a clear violation of the zoning code. The technique I used to capture this particular snake was as follows:

1. Make an extremely non-masculine sound such as might be emitted by a recently castrated Teletubby.

2. Run out to the patio and grab the barbecue tongs.

3. Run back into the office and, while squinting really hard so as not to make eye contact with the snake, pick it up with the tongs.

4. Run, whimpering, back out onto the patio with mincing steps and quickly release the snake in such a manner that it falls into your swimming pool.

5. Change your underwear.

Bear in mind that the snake I captured was of the non-python variety, and was only about two feet long. To capture a Burmese python, which can grow to nearly 20 feet, you will need really big barbecue tongs.

At this point you are no doubt wondering: “If I capture a python, is it safe to eat the meat?” I will answer that with another question: Where do you think Slim Jims come from?

No! That is a joke, and as such it is protected from lawsuits by the Constitution. The actual answer, according to the Python Challenge website, is that “neither the Florida Department of Health nor the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services have stated that python meat is safe to consume.” I interpret that to mean: “Yes.”

Here’s some more good news: You can keep your python skins! The website lists the names of some companies that might want them, including a company called Dragon Backbone, which “will trade a knife for four python skins at least four feet long.” (I am still not making this up.) The website also says that a company called All American Gator Products “can tan a Burmese python skin and fashion it into something you want.” (The website does not come right out and use the term “thong,” but we can read between the lines.)

In conclusion, I think the Python Challenge is one of those ideas that cannot possibly go wrong, and, assuming it goes off with a minimum of unnecessary deaths, it should be extended to other unwanted species, starting with a Cockroach Challenge. So to all you python hunters, I say: Good luck! We Floridians all look forward to the big moment when the dead pythons are counted and the winner declared. It’s bound to be exciting. You know how good this state is at counting things.

If we’re serious about sending forth an army of gun-toting, beer-drinking, redneck snake-hunters to wade into the Everglades and eradicate the python hordes, we’re going to need more than a couple of piddling cash prizes.

We’ll need a queen.

Any officially sanctioned snake-killing frenzy worth a damn comes with a beauty contest. Apparently, girls in bathing attire, presumably of the snakeskin variety, are downright essential to a successful hunt.

So far, only about 400 contestants have signed up for South Florida’s “2013 Python Challenge,” which kicks off Saturday. Compare that to the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater (that’s the other Sweetwater) which brings in about 30,000 apparent lunatics every year to a dusty town in the middle of Texas with a population of not quite 11,000, where the only other tourist attraction is the National WASP Museum (for the women Army fliers, not the insects.) South Florida’s python shindig would need 18 million attendees just to keep pace, proportionately, with the festivities in Sweetwater.

What Sweetwater offers, along with the rattlesnake holocaust, is a Miss Snake Charmer, though the title is a bit of misnomer, given that pageant winners are required to decapitate a rattlesnake. I dug up this charming Associated Press quote from Laney Wallace, 16, Miss Snake Charmer circa 2011. “Tomorrow I get to skin snakes and chop their heads off. And I’m super excited about it.”

Go ahead with your snide Freudian analysis, but last year that giant posse of displaced Texas cowboys collected bounties on 1,700 pounds of rattlesnake redeemed at $5.50 a pound.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, meanwhile, is offering $1,000 to the hunter who brings in the longest python, and $1,500 for the fellow who bring in the most pythons. Of course, certain rules apply. No roadkill. No pets. “DON’T dismember pythons into more than two pieces or they will not qualify for the ‘longest snake’ category.”

Also, pythons must be dispatched humanely. Miss Snake Charmer would be disappointed, but Florida rules won’t allow decapitations. Gunshots to the head, however, will be okay. Also, “captive bolts,” a slaughterhouse instrument familiar to moviegoers as the killer’s favored weapon in No Country for Old Men. A special FWC online python challenge training course suggests: “To target the correct area, draw an imaginary line from the rear left of the head to the right eye, and then draw another line from the rear right of the head to the left eye. While one person is holding the snake in place, position the captive bolt where those lines intersect. The bolt must enter at a slight angle, not flush to the skull.”

Imagine some conscientious serpent hunter, trying to figure the prescribed humane angle while wrestling a 15-foot Burmese python in two feet of black swamp water. No, this particular snake extravaganza will be all about gunplay. If the hunters can find something to shoot.

Apparently, the idea of a python hunt came out of the governor’s office, where it was conceived as a “market driven” solution to a fast-breeding exotic that’s caused considerable damage to native wading bird and small mammal populations. (Instead of, say, pushing Congress to ban the importation of exotic reptiles.)

But Michael Dorcas, a herpetology researcher, author of I nvasive Pythons in the United States and an expert in these stealthy exotics, suggested Monday that the marketplace may seem a little bare. “The one thing I know about these snakes,” said Dorcas, who knows everything about these snakes, “is that they’re very difficult to find.” Dorcas said that Burmese pythons are so secretive and so well camouflaged, “we’ve walked right past a 15-foot python without seeing it.”

He said the snakes range across thousands of square kilometers of southern Florida, most of that habitat away from roads and canals and nearly inaccessible to most hunters. “Probably, some pythons will be removed, but the damage to the overall population will be minimal.”

Dorcas worries more about unintended consequences to other populations, including humans. The Sun-Sentinel reported that hunters from 17 states have signed up for the month-long python chase. They’ll be coming into unfamiliar terrain, laden with poisonous native snakes, underwater limestone holes and other local hazards. The required 30-minute online training course seems a bit inadequate.

Dorcas is more worried about native snakes, likely to be scarfed up by frustrated python hunters, ready to blast away at any reticulated reptile that happens their way. Saturday could be a very bad day to be a brown water snake caught out without proper identification.

Ironically, the Rick Scott Python Challenge comes the same year that the famous Rattlesnake Roundup in Claxton, Ga., immortalized in the Harry Crews novel Feast of Snakes, stopped rounding up snakes. Wildlife officials noticed that the hunters had been pouring kerosene down tortoise burrows, setting them alight and catching the panicked snakes as they escaped. Several hundred other species also resided in those burned-out turtle abodes. Meanwhile, the Eastern rattlesnake has neared extinction. So this year, the roundup became a non-lethal wildlife celebration.

Texans, of course, don’t care much about biodiversity and the relative value of venomous native snakes. Rattlesnake hunts persist, guilt free. Maybe some of the promotional ideas that make these Texas hunts so damn successful might be worth emulating in python-plagued Florida. For instance, in Brownsville, home of the Brownsville Rattlesnake Roundup, locals distinguish themselves from the crazies in Sweetwater by devouring the still-beating hearts of freshly killed rattlesnakes. “They’re little-bitty. You don’t really chew them up. You just put them in your mouth and swallow them,” a festival organizer explained to BigCountry.com, an Abilene, Texas, news website.

A first-time taster compared rattlesnake heart to “eating a slug….. It sure doesn’t taste like chicken.”

Who knows if the still-beating heart of a Burmese python heart in South Florida would have the same gourmet appeal as a west Texas rattlesnake? No, what we need is a queen, Miss Python Challenge 2013.

With a little luck, she’ll be as adept at public relations and reptile dissection as Miss Snake Charmer Laney Wallace, who didn’t slither away from her queenly duties. “You have to make sure you don’t pop the bladder,” she warned. “That’s a huge mess.”

By Fred Grimm

Saving Florida’s riversOUR OPINION: Urgent task can no longer be postponed

By The Miami Herald Editorial

HeraldEd@MiamiHerald.com

In 2003, when a leaky gypsum stack at an abandoned phosphate plant threatened to kill a vast cross section of Tampa Bay's marine life, Charles Kovach came up with a solution that saved the bay.

But this month, 17 years after he was hired by the state Department of Environmental Protection, Kovach was one of 58 DEP employees laid off by the agency. Kovach believes those layoffs were designed to loosen regulation of polluting industries.

"I've seen the way politics has influenced that agency in the past, but never like this," Kovach said. "It's not about compliance (with the rules). It's about making things look like they're compliant."

On top of the layoffs is the fact that DEP Secretary Herschel Vinyard has installed a number of new people in the agency's upper ranks whose prior experience was working as engineers or consultants for companies the DEP regulates.

The DEP's deputy secretary in charge of regulatory programs previously spent a decade as an engineer who specialized in getting clients their environmental permits. Another engineer who worked for developers heads up the division of water resources. A lawyer who helped power plants get their permits is now in charge of air pollution permitting. An engineering company lobbyist became a deputy director overseeing water and sewer facilities.

And the DEP's chief operating officer is a former chemical company and real estate executive from Brandon. He's not an employee, though. He's a consultant who's being paid $83 an hour — more than Vinyard makes on a per-hour basis — to advise Vinyard and his staff on ways to save money.

The DEP "was never great," said Mark Bardolph, a 27-year DEP veteran — and onetime whistle-blower — who was laid off from the Tallahassee office. "But now it's all a political farce."

DEP press secretary Patrick Gillespie defended the agency's staffing under Vinyard.

"The department strives to employ the most qualified staff members and seeks a diverse group of individuals to lead and support our mission of protecting the environment," Gillespie said in an e-mail. The layoffs weren't aimed at politicizing the agency or placating industry, Gillespie said. Instead, he said, the DEP was ensuring that "staffing levels are reflected by workloads and supporting the mission of protecting the environment."

The agency's leaders "have spent months assessing staff and structures to identify inefficiencies and improvements and how to more effectively carry out our duties," he said.

As for Brandon-based consultant Randall F. "Randy" Greene, Gillespie said he was hired because he "has a background in financial consulting and transactions and specializes in strategic and financial planning for companies and their officers."

However, Gillespie could provide no contracts or other paperwork documenting what Greene does or when and why he was hired. Gillespie said he only works part-time but a state website lists Greene as a full-time employee. Greene could not be reached for comment, but his Linkedin entry says he has served as the DEP's chief operating officer since September 2011.

The hiring of people from the private sector to run the agency's most important divisions has been going on since Vinyard, a shipyard executive, was appointed to the office in January 2011 by Gov. Rick Scott. According to former employees, the hiring and layoffs reflect the Scott administration's pro-business attitudes.

"It's a hatred of regulation in general and in particular environmental regulations," Bardolph said. "It's profit that counts."

Kovach, Bardolph and the other employees who were laid off learned their fate in November, but were kept on the payroll until this month to give them time to find new employment. One was notified via e-mail while on active duty with the Coast Guard, according to the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

"The majority of positions they were eliminating are compliance and enforcement positions," said PEER's Jerry Phillips, a former DEP attorney. "They want to essentially turn the agency over to the regulated industries."

Gillespie called Phillips' allegations "baseless" and said, "Rather than allow for environmental harm to occur and fine an entity after the fact, the department has put more effort into outreach and education in order to keep businesses and other permit holders in compliance."

Both Kovach and Bardolph said the layoffs appeared to target more experienced employees, regardless of their past achievements or the importance of their jobs.

"They got rid of everyone with any history and knowledge," Kovach said. The people who remain, he predicted, will be so cowed they "won't be able to speak their minds."

Kovach was not known to be shy about speaking up. Nine years ago, when the bankrupt Piney Point phosphate plant began leaking and threatened to spill millions of gallons of waste into the bay, it was his proposal that saved the day: load it onto barges that sprayed it across a 20,000-square-mile area in the Gulf of Mexico.

When his bosses told him he was being laid off, Kovach said, "they said, 'Don't you think it's about time you look for a new career?' " When he asked what they meant, "they suggested academia."

Bardolph had run into trouble for speaking out before. As a state dairy inspector, he filed a complaint in 1999 alleging the DEP had failed to protect the aquifer from animal waste. As a result, he was transferred to a section that had nothing to do with permitting. Instead, he worked with people whose wells had been contaminated to help them find a new source of water. He was assisting a dozen or so when the ax fell, he said, and he was escorted out of the office with his belongings in a box.

The people deciding who was laid off "looked at an organizational chart, but they didn't even know what people did," Bardolph said. "My boss was just outraged that they got rid of me."

Then, Bardolph said, they got rid of his boss, too.

By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Craig Pittman can be reached at craig@tampabay.com.

Hurricane Sandy's weekend nudge to Lake Okeechobee's rising water levels add to flood control concerns with a month of storm season still to go.

Flooding threats from the fast-rising lake in September prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to start draining billions of gallons of lake water out to sea to ease the strain on its 70-year-old dike — considered one of the country's most at risk of failing. But lake water levels have actually gone up nearly one foot since the draining started Sept. 19. That's because South Florida's vast drainage system of canals, pumps and levees fills up the lake faster than it can lower it.

Letter: My governments have killed my St. Lucie River

The South Florida Water Management District announced more releases of Lake Okeechobee into our already stressed and filthy St. Lucie River.

This amazing estuary is home to hundreds of species and serves as a nursery for ocean species as well. So why has our government killed our river?

No politicians on a state or national level have done anything to stop this massive destruction, essentially taking the river, and the life it should sustain, away from me, you, and our children.

With all the talk these days of the economy, politicians and candidates choose to ignore the importance of a healthy river to our community and its members who make their living from it in so many ways.

I wonder if our politicians have been fishing here, paddle boarding, pulled their kids tubing or skiing, or looked for hermit crabs on the banks of our river.

I also wonder how much they've received in campaign contributions from Big Sugar, an industry catered to by our government, one with little interest in clean estuaries.

How is it that the state of Florida could fast-track millions of dollars to help a company make movies, yet they somehow can't come up with any money for Everglades restoration?

It's heartbreaking to watch the Army Corps of Engineers and water district destroy what they should be protecting. My government has killed my river, and I am angry.

-TCPalm

Black skimmers gather on the sand's edge on Lanark Reef this week. The mostly submerged island is a haven for nesting sea and shore birds, as well as migratory and wintering species. / Jennifer Portman/Democrat

 LANARK REEF — After decades of worry by conservationists about the future of one of Florida’s most important destinations for nesting and migrating sea and shorebirds, this fragile strip of sand flats and sea oats is now entirely in safe hands.

Audubon Florida announced this week it has purchased the last privately held parcel on the low-lying reef located in the Gulf of Mexico less than a mile south of Lanark Village.

Lanark Reef is an avian hotspot. It is home to the largest of the Panhandles’ four brown pelican rookeries, and supports large numbers of nesting shorebirds, including black skimmers, willets and the American Oystercatcher, which is a threatened species in Florida. The reef is considered an “Important Bird Area” by Audubon, and is designed a critical habitat for the Piping Plover by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. More than 250 species of birds use the reef for spring and summer nesting and as a stopping point for winter migration.

“Lanark Reef is one of the most important breeding, wintering and migratory sites for coastal birds in the state of Florida,” Julie Wraithmell, Audubon Florida’s Director of Wildlife Conservation told the Tallahassee Democrat on a trip to the reef this week. “It’s a bird factory.”

The purchase was completed quietly last month, when the nonprofit paid $33,000 to Premier Bank, which acquired the property in 2011 from Tallahassee developer Hurley Booth. Though large areas of the six-mile long reef are submerged at high tide, the state in the 1950s conveyed parts of the island that mostly remain dry into private ownership. Booth had the title to the remaining 1.7-acre parcel for about a decade and five years ago sought to build home sites on the narrow swath of sand. The submerged lands of the reef are owned by the state.

The scant dry land, however, is not zoned for development of any kind and is not part of Franklin County’s land use map, said director of Administrative Services Alan Pierce. While permits for several septic tanks were granted by a county department in 2007, Pierce said the county turned down Hurley’s request to build seven homes on the reef.

“We said no, it’s not land that can be suited for development,” Pierce said. “It’s just a sandbar as far as we are concerned.”

Audubon Florida purchased the land from the bank with money provided by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation from the sale of recovered oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Private donations from around the nation also contributed toward the purchase and ongoing management of the reef.

“There is something fitting about using that money,” Wraithmell said of the recovered oil funding.

John Himes, northwest regional biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said he is glad the reef now will be protected. Not only does it provide nursery and resting grounds for threatened and endangered sea and shore birds, it is also home to the diamond back terrapin, a rare salt marsh turtle.

“It is a really important area,” he said, pointing out its obvious shortcomings for residential development as it is frequently washed over during storms. “It’s not like we are taking anything away from anyone.”

As ill-suited as the reef is for human habitation, it is ideal for the many bird species that flock there. In the spring and summer, thousands of birds crowd its uplands free from the threat of mammal predators such as racoons and coyotes. Its relative remoteness discourages harmful disturbances by people and pets.

“Our coasts are home to species of birds that live their entire lives in this dramatic landscape of sand and wind and salt,” Wraithmell said. “Even though you think they’d be really tough, in fact they are very vulnerable.”

The nests and eggs of many nesting shorebirds are camouflaged and easily destroyed by even the most well-meaning human contact. While the reef is safely viewed up close from a boat, people are encouraged to not walk on the islands. Stepping on the island causes birds to leave their nests, leaving their young vulnerable to predatory birds or the hot sun.

“People don’t know the harm they can cause,” Wraithmell said. “There is this tendency to say, ‘It’s just this once,’ but once is enough to do damage.”

Himes said looking at the birds is fine “as long as you keep your distance.” The place is a bird sanctuary.

Though the notion of houses on the small spits of sand seems improbable, Wraithmell said private ownership was still a risk.

“Unfortunately, in the current times, I’m not sure what I would put off the table,” she said.

Wraithmell said acquiring the land is just the beginning of protecting it for the future. Audubon Florida plans to work with the state to develop a management plan for the entire reef.

“Everyone has to take responsibility for keeping this place as special as it is,” she said. “Wildlife brings so much to our quality of life. It’s a big part of what Florida is. We’ve got a chance up here to hold on to it. There is no time to lose.”

Gail Phillips, an Audubon volunteer and nearby Gulf Terrace resident whose home looks out on the reef, is pleased it will now be protected and managed in a consistent way.

“I am absolutely thrilled,” Phillips said. “It’s a hidden jewel.”

-By Jennifer Portman

Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam on Wednesday outlined what he called the "hard economic truths facing Florida agriculture" including the need for a "smart" immigration policy, dealing with invasive animals and plant diseases, improving Florida seaports to gain new overseas markets and ensuring future water supplies.

"These (issues) aren't separate silos," Putnam said during a speech to the Economic Club of Florida. "The future of agriculture and the future of Florida are entwined."

"Agriculture is present on two-thirds of the acreage of our state," he continued. "If that goes away, what replaces it that's better than what we have --Citrus groves along highway 27, the magnificent pine forests up and down I-10.

"What replaces that -- that gives you the same economic value, the same tax base stability and the same quality of life issues? Chances are it's not better than what you have right now in terms of a vibrant agriculture industry."

Florida's agriculture industry produces $100 billion in sales annually and provides 1 million jobs, according to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The agriculture commissioner said he views child nutrition as an economic issue because the state every year spends $1 billion on school nutrition programs with four million meals served each day. Taxpayers are helping pay for many free and reduced cost meals as well as the health care costs resulting from poor diets.

"If we are content to serve Tater Tots and ketchup and call it a starch and a vegetable, we will pay the economic consequences of doing that," he said.

Putnam said he has about 50 people now in Hialeah, Kendall and West Miami looking for the giant African land snails that can eat almost anything including the stucco off homes. Agriculture must factor for the increased threat from foreign species and agricultural diseases.

"When there is a breakdown at the federal government level at an airport or seaport it is frequently the state taxpayers who are asked to pick up the tab and clean up the mess," he said.

The planned widening of the Panama Canal, he said, could be a boost for Florida agriculture. He said the port could bring consumer products that now are unloaded from ships in California to Florida if the state is ready. And those ships could return with Florida agricultural products.

He also said a smart immigration policy is needed the "best human capital" from around the world to fill employment gaps.

"The simple fact is if we want to be a free nation that can feed itself and not be as dependent on others as we are for our fuel, we need that stable legal workforce," he said.

The biggest long-term economic challenge facing agriculture and the state, he said, is water. He said the lack of water flowing from federal reservoirs in Georgia into the Apalachicola River is having "devastating" consequences for oystermen and the seafood industry at Apalachicola Bay.

Water supply, he said, must be a substantial component of state programs in the future the way land acquisition has been in recent decades.

"It is that connection to the water," he said, "that not only gives us an identity but gives us the economic foundation for everything that flows from it."