On Saturday, April 19, 2008, Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior Lynn Scarlett participated in a hike into Everglades National Park near Flamingo to view orchids with Roger Hammer (author of Everglades Wildflowers and naturalist with Miami-Dade County). Representatives of Audubon of Florida, park staff and friends also attended the hike. On the return leg of the hike, while walking through tall grass and heavy thatch near the edge of the mangroves, Scarlett spotted a snake moving through a small opening in the grass. She hailed her fellow hikers, and the group was able to remove a 8-foot to 9-foot, non-native Burmese python from the heavy thatch. Park rangers subsequently transported the snake to the park's python lab in Pine Island for further analysis.

While more than 250 pythons were found in and near Everglades National Park last year, most were found along the main park road or in agricultural fields adjacent to the park. Finding pythons in the wild is an extremely rare event.

Park biologists say exotic pet trade and pet owners who release pythons into the wilderness are responsible for the snake's existence within the Everglades. An invasive species in south Florida, Burmese pythons could find comfortable climatic conditions in roughly a third of the United States, according U.S. Geological Survey. The maps, which USGS released February, matched the climate from where the Burmese pythons occur naturally (Pakistan to Indonesia) to areas in the United States. Wildlife managers are concerned that these snakes pose a danger to federally and state-listed threatened and endangered species, as well as to humans. Burmese pythons can grow to more than 20 feet long and more than 250 pounds.

Deputy Secretary Scarlett has taken the entire incident in stride and plans to call Sen. Bill Nelson regarding her personal encounter with a python in the Everglades. Nelson recently held a press conference in the park regarding the threat pythons pose to the ongoing ecosystem restoration effort and to threatened and endangered species in particular; he subsequently sent a letter to Scarlett on this topic, and they met last week in Washington, D.C., to discuss this matter in more detail.

USGS Release on Potential Non-native Python Habitat:
http://www.nps.gov/ever/parknews/usgs-maps-show-potential
-non-native-python-habitat-along-3-us-coasts.htm