Purpose: This bill would ban the importation and interstate commerce of pythons thus reducing the risk that these animals pose to our native wildlife when released into the wild.
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Status: Committee on Environment and Public Works. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably.
Action: SUPPORT. Please contact your U.S. Senators and urge them to support S. 373. Tell your Senators that pythons are one species of snakes that are destroying some of our nation’s most treasured — and most fragile — ecosystems. We must shut down the importation of the snakes and end the interstate commerce and transportation of them.
Talking Points for your letter:
- Pythons and other large constrictor snakes are highly adaptable to new environments and are opportunistic in expanding their geographic range.
- The Burmese python is currently distributed across many thousands of square miles in south Florida and a population of boa constrictors is established south of Miami. In addition, recent evidence strongly suggests a reproducing population of northern African pythons on the western boundaries of Miami.
- It is well known that restoring threatened and endangered species is a lengthy and costly process. American citizens who pay to restore imperiled species should not be forced to pay the price for the small percentage of the population who are interested in possessing harmful reptile species.
- The interest in trading and possessing pythons should not be placed above the interests of a majority of Americans who do not want our native species placed at risk for such frivolous pursuits.
- Reptiles are not regulated under the federal Animal Welfare Act leaving the majority of reptile dealers and retailers free from federal oversight.
- Exotic reptiles including pythons pose a significant threat to public health and safety. Like most captive wild animals, captive snakes are unpredictable and like all reptiles are carriers of salmonella. The most common injury caused by constricting snakes such as boas and pythons are by way of biting, squeezing, asphyxiation, and transmission of salmonella.
- Pythons are wild animals and they belong in the wild — in their native countries. The standard captive environments that these animals are kept in when held in private hands are incapable accommodating and/or facilitating natural reptile behavior. Relinquishing an animal to an environment in such stark contrast to the habitat to which it is adapted is not conservation nor is it humane.