Tom Rahill has won the annual Florida Python Challenge after removing 96 invasive Burmese pythons from the Everglades National Park. The competition is part of an ongoing initiative to remove hundreds of the snakes from the area each year.
The challenge invites hunters to capture and humanely euthanise as many invasive snakes as possible over 10 days across eight designated hunting locations. Rahill, a professional python hunter, founded SwampApes, an organisation that takes veterans with PTSD on python hunts.
This year's competition, which took place in July, attracted 907 participants from 30 US states, Canada, and Vietnam. In total, 280 snakes were removed during the 10-day event. Before the competition, 1,400 pythons had already been removed this year.
Burmese pythons, native to south-east Asia, were first found in the Everglades in the 1990s and are considered an apex predator that consumes resources and impacts native wildlife. Conservative estimates suggest their population is in the tens of thousands.
The annual challenge is held during the summer hatching season to increase the number of pythons caught. Since 2017, more than 1,600 snakes have been removed through the event, with over 19,000 removed in total when combined with year-round efforts by Florida Fish, Wildlife and Conservation (FWC) contractors.