Overview
- The Florida Python Challenge starts Friday and runs for 10 days with more than $25,000 in prizes to encourage public removal of invasive Burmese pythons.
- Everglades National Park returns as one of eight official competition locations, and the event allows registration through the final day after mandatory online training.
- The FWC enforces strict entry rules that require proof of registration, ban firearms and use of dogs, allow air guns or captive bolts for entries, and require chilled or frozen carcasses to be turned in within 24 hours.
- State guidance lets private landowners authorize humane killing of pythons without a permit, the FWC publishes specific euthanasia steps, and the public is asked to photograph sightings and call the Exotic Species Hotline at 888-483-4681.
- Officials point to past removal totals to measure progress—about 294 pythons removed in 2025, more than 1,400 taken during all Python Challenge events to date, and roughly 16,000 removed by contractors since 2017—while stressing that sustained, combined public and contractor efforts are needed to protect Everglades wildlife.