Florida python team logs first 'four-ton' season after removing record 177 snakes

Southwest Florida's fight against invasive Burmese pythons has reached both a grim milestone and a hopeful one. 

One Naples-based conservation team now says it has completed its first "four-ton" removal season, pulling a record quantity of the massive snakes from the landscape before more eggs could hatch.

What's happening?

As USA Today reported, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida removed a record 177 pythons weighing a combined 8,080 pounds from across a 200-square-mile area of Southwest Florida between November 2025 and April 2026. 

Ian Bartoszek, a biologist and program manager at the Conservancy, led the team. No season has brought in more pythons for the Conservancy since it started its tracking and removal work in 2013.

Meanwhile, according to USA Today, the average female captured this season weighed roughly 95 pounds and carried about 70 eggs each. The outlet also reported that the Conservancy's Southwest Florida effort in total has now removed 1,750 pythons weighing more than 53,000 pounds collectively. 

Bartoszek said the team used tagged male "scout snakes" to help locate breeding females deep in the landscape before the eggs could be laid and hatch, per USA Today.

The largest snake captured by the team this season measured 17 feet in length and weighed a whopping 153 pounds.

Why does it matter?

Burmese pythons have been linked to steep declines in native wildlife in and around the Everglades, where hunters, hikers, and others have reported quieter landscapes and fewer deer, rabbits, birds, bobcats, and foxes.

Food and resources that once supported native animals are instead being converted into enormous invasive predators that can grow to nearly 19 feet and weigh more than 200 pounds. And the native animals themselves are falling prey to these snakes.

Slowing python reproduction could give native species a better chance to recover. And removing them can support healthier ecosystems, which in turn can support recreation, tourism, scientific research, and the natural systems that help make the region livable.

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