1.
A Russell’s
Viper is milked
at the Irula
Co-op. Image by
Arul. C. V.
2.
The 4.8m
female Burmese
Python located
by the two Irula
snake hunters at
the Key Largo
missile base.
Image by Janaki
Lenin.
3.
Vadivel
Gopal, Rom
Whitaker and
Masi Sadaiyan
with another
large Burmese
Python captured
on Spoil Island.
Image by Ed
Metzger.
2.
authorities had caught close to 600
specimens. By 2017, that number
had risen to more than 3,000.
The pythons consume rare birds,
deer and alligators, and constitute a
particular threat to small mammals
such as Raccoons, opossums and
Marsh Rabbits. Various control
methods have been trialled,
including traps, heat-sensing drones
and ‘Judas’ snakes – large females
released with tracking devices in the
breeding season in order to attract
males. In 2016, around
1,000 hunters were in-
volved in a month-long
hunt which resulted in the
capture of 106 snakes.
But the reality is that
authorities have struggled
to manage and contain
the snakes, and their
impact on the unique
Everglades ecosystem.
3.
As early as 2009, Rom
Whitaker came up with
the idea of using the
Irulas to hunt down
pythons in the Ever-
glades. Why shouldn’t
their snake catching
prowess be equally
effective on the other side
of the world? The Ameri-
cans were not convinced, but finally
in August 2016 the Florida Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Commission
consented to let the project go ahead.
And so it was that in January 2017
two Irula snake hunters, Masi
Sadaiyan and Vadivel Gopal,
accompanied by Rom Whitaker and
his partner, writer and film-maker
Janaki Lenin, arrived in Florida.
The two Irula men waded into the
largest subtropical wilderness in the
world, armed with their machetes
and crowbars. Within two days they
had caught five pythons; in less than
two weeks they had found 14; and in
four weeks they located a total of 27.
The largest of these was a 4.8m
(15.65ft) female weighing 75kg
(165lb) that was found holed up with
two males in a bunker of an
abandoned missile base in Key
Largo. Although Burmese Pythons
were known to be breeding on the
island, this was the first known
instance of anyone successfully
setting out to look for them. For