Giant invasive, pet-eating snakes take over Puerto Rico: ‘It’s very, very bad’

By Katherine Donlevy

Boa constrictors and pythons are running rampant in Puerto Rico as the massive, invasive species are popping up in less hospitable areas across the island — swallowing livestock, pets and native birds along the way.

Locals have desperately tried to quell the snakes’ surging population since the issue first arose more than a decade ago, but the beasts have only pushed deeper into and claimed larger swathes of the island.

“It’s very, very bad,” Alberto R. Puente-Rolón, a biologist at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüe, told Vox during a reporter’s visit to the snake-infested island.

“We have a serious problem and a serious threat to the bird species here.”

Boa constrictors, which are native to South and Central America, first began showing up in Puerto Rico around 2012, likely after they were accidentally unleashed in connection with the exotic pet trade.

With no natural predators to keep the 75-pound snakes in check, the boa population has only boomed in the last decade.

One of the clearest examples of the accelerating takeover is in Cabo Rojo, a wildlife refuge along Puerto Rico’s southwestern coast — where experts estimate that at least five boa constrictors can be found per acre.

In the last four months alone, a team of surveyors rounded up more than 150 invasive boa constrictors, a jaw-dropping number made even more shocking by how inhospitable the environment is for the snakes.

The habitat is extremely hot and dry and has sparse forest foliage, meaning the boas — which can grow up to 16 feet in length on average — have few places to hide.

The deviation from its typically humid, wet and well-covered climate suggests to experts that boa constrictors are so abundant that they’re spreading to more challenging habitats, Vox reported.

It has become commonplace to spot both boa constrictors and reticulated pythons — the longest snakes in the world known to reach 30 feet — in backyards, chicken coops and even cars, and unfortunately consuming small animals roaming the fields.

Locals have taken matters into their own hands and become snake hunters — better known on the island as reticuleros.

“We need to find more, because my cats are gone, my chickens are gone,” Odalis Luna, a local hunter who once caught a 17-foot reticulated python in front of her house.

“It’s a problem.”

Cats, birds and other small mammals have also been found in the bellies of the slain beasts, including the Puerto Rican parrot, one of the world’s rarest avian species.

Any depletion of these native species could have devastating effects on Puerto Rico’s ecosystem, experts told the outlet, and the diseases boas and pythons carry also pose a danger to the island’s smaller, native snakes.

Fortunately, there is still room for the takeover to be reversed, thanks to the help of reticuleros.

Some of the reticuleros kill the massive snakes while others call authorities to bring them to Cambalache, a holding facility for exotic animals that receives invasive snakes almost daily.

How many beasts are still left in the wilds of Puerto Rico, however, is a mystery.

https://nypost.com/2024/05/21/world-news/invasive-boa-constrictors-pythons-take-over-puerto-rico/