Florida wildlife officials are considering putting a $50 to $100 bounty on Burmese Pythons to try and control the invasive pest that has become a menace to native wildlife in South Florida. I'm sure local authorities realize the drawbacks to this, gun-toting rednecks will now descend on the 'glades like deerflies, killing every snake in sight, even valuable domestic species, and tearing up the ground in their swamp buggies and airboats to try and get a piece of the action, leaving a trail of beer cans and brush fires behind them. So the situation must be desperate. I know the pet trade industry fought tooth and nail to stop legislation that would control the importation of these dangerous pests.

I sometimes wonder if we just shouldn't give up; declare the Everglades an environmental free-fire zone, remove all restrictions to development and use, and direct our resources to where they can still do some good. The "Glades are shot, only a fraction in size of what they once were, and the damage is irreparable, starting a long time before efforts began to try and save it. Nothing we can do now will make it what it once was, and it's role as a water resource for the 3 or 4 million in its cities and the industrial agriculture that depends on it is probably too late to save anyway. The plume birds are gone, The timber is gone, the sport and commercial fisheries its coasts supported are gone, and the wildlife is about gone. The land itself is now in almost constantly on fire somewhere, almost all the time.

The glades used to stretch from Lake Okeechobee to the Florida Keys, almost a third of peninsular Florida. Now it is pretty much limited to the National Park, and it is vanishing fast. Let's see what will happen to this place if we just let it go, let mankind take its course, and preserve the ruin that's left it as a monument to our greed and our stupidity.

"We live in a swamp and we're running out of water". -- Roger Wise.