EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK – A 60-year-old former real estate agent is leading the effort to purge invasive pythons from Florida’s Everglades.
Donna Kalil runs the Everglades Avenger Team, which is working to eradicate pythons. The massive snakes are upending the ecosystem and are described as “one of the most intractable invasive-species management issues across the globe,” by the USGS. The team is hired by state agencies to search for the snakes.
Kalil was inspired to change her career when she saw pictures of an alligator that escaped from a huge python’s stomach. “They were eating everything,” Kalil told the Los Angeles Times. “They were destroying this beautiful, wonderful place.”
She and her team hunt for the snakes overnight, on the fringes of Everglades National Park (not inside the park, due to regulations). They’ve caught hundreds of snakes, which are believed to have been imported from Southeast Asia by the illegal exotic pet trade. It’s estimate that there are more than 100,000 pythons living in South Florida.
