With the killing? Or against?

[JimmyDavid]

Can we locate each and all alien animal in Florida?"No, but we can kill those that we come across"-you say. Well, in my opinion
that's never gonna solve the issue and you're left with just simple violence. Besides i still think that an animal that manages to survive in an environment, deserves it's place there. That's what the history of species has been all along, survival. You may say this and that, but who asked human beings to be the "police of the natural world"?
Sorry, i respect your ideas (i really do), but it's just a matter of definion. I think it's cruel to directly kill an animal, you might find cruel that i see no crime in a species replacing another.

[mudflats]

i agree with JimmyDavid almost 100% except for the fact that i now just got. Will killing and trying to elliminate all exotics hurt Foridas ecosystem, NO it will help. I would much rather kill burmese pythons then see out native wildlife go down the drains, ie: juvenile gators, birds and other mammals. We need to eliminate all the exotics before they eliminate all the natives. I still would love to have another method other then killing, that was the purpose of this post, to get more ideas. But it seems killing is the only option.

[CamHanna]

I don't know that I like the idea of an open hunting season. It may well elimate the burms but it will also draw every trigger-happy redneck with a shotgun into a national park. I would rather see a well governed commercial harvest, whether it be for skins, animal feed or human consumption. I am sure there would be a healthy market for large pythons throughout North America (as I believe was mentioned).

[JimmyDavid]

I realise your goals are fine, but your ways are too extremist, people. And extreme behaviour leads to Violence, wich i disagree with. And Violence breeds more violence...
Chinese wisdom : " What makes a man noble is not wether or not he achieved his goals, but what means he used to get there."

Sometimes we think we have the right to preserve nature AS WE KNOW IT, wich we don't. We only have the right to preserve nature's hability to continue evolving, and that's what we are leaving for future generations.
Having the nostalgic wish for the world to freeze in a copy of our lifetime's is not right, since species have been migrating, replacing others, getting extinct, etc since the dawn of life. And so it must continue, and we, my friends, are way too little to see the big picture...
So what if some snow bird migrates to Florida and does better than the local birds?! If it conquered the environment, deserves it's place there.
Sometimes, man should be more of an observer and let nature just take it's course.
Maybe in a 1000 years, people will talk of how a pet craze brought Great species to Florida, How those species started to breed and against all odds, they survived a "panic kill" from the locals. The children will laugh then, because it's just too natural for them to see pythons and monitors around, and can't imagine Florida without them.
What species will be extinct then? Wich species will be doing good? Does it matter? Shoul we really stunt nature's course?
Sure, Burms arrived by "artificial" ways, since man's involved, but isn't the remedy your sugesting also artificial then, besides of violent?

[marisa]

So you do not agree with Australia and Guam killing invaders? They should allow cane toads and green snakes to take over the area?

I agree with many of your points but there is also a time to STOP invaders when they are absolutly killing native wildlife.

Marisa

[BWSmith]

This is NOT a natural process of nature no matter how you look at it. It is not a migration or natural selection. It is a situation that humans have caused, so we must do what we can to correct the problem. We cannot just ask the invasive species to leave. I think that it is hard for many to understand that do not live near the problem and see it first hand.

[lostwithin]

JimmyDavid, I'm sorry but I have to completely disagree with you, the way your looking at it makes no sense, you would rather see us leave animals thrive at the expense loosing complete species? This is not natural at all we picked species up from one part of the world carried them across oceans, and dropped them off on the other side, that’s not natural.
If we were to live by your logic we, as humans would be the only species on earth because killing an introduced species is no different then protecting an endangered one. In both cases we are trying to allow nature to progress by its own terms, not ours. You are right, we should allow nature to take its course, and the way to do that is to remove the unnatural parts.

Devon