“I have a great respect for the python, but I also have a great respect for the Florida ecosystem,” Amy Siewe tells Inside Edition.
Polls show more than half of the population in the United States is afraid of snakes, but Amy Siewe is not one of them. Dubbed the “Python Huntress,” Siewe searches for slithering reptiles in the Florida Everglades for an important reason.
Siewe looks for and kills Florida’s invasive Burmese pythons, which can grow up to 20 feet long.
She has caught more than 500.
The non-native pythons, some released as pets, breed freely in the Everglades. The reptiles made a home there, but they are destroying it, too.
“I’m talking about bobcats, deer, raccoon. They eat everything so our wildlife is disappearing because of these pythons,” Siewe tells Inside Edition.
Up to 98 percent of mammals in parts of the Everglades have been wiped out entirely by the snakes.
“One of the problems with these pythons is that when they’re born they hatch out of the egg at two feet, and that’s just a little smaller than this guy,” Siewe says. “I have a great respect for the python, but I also have a great respect for the Florida ecosystem, and I know how absolutely important it is that we work our hardest to do something about this problem.”
