Florida Python Challenge Removes 280 Burmese Pythons as a Single Hunter Takes 96 and the $10,000 Grand Prize

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has announced the results of the 2026 Florida Python Challenge, and the headline number belongs to one hunter. Over the course of the 10-day competition, 907 participants collectively removed 280 invasive Burmese pythons from South Florida. Tom Rahill accounted for 96 of them on his own, taking the Ultimate Grand Prize of $10,000.

Every one of Rahill's 96 snakes came out of Everglades National Park, which returned this year as a competition partner and one of eight official Python Challenge locations. The park's participation was a notable feature of the 2026 event and expanded the ground available to registered hunters across the region.

The longest python recorded during the competition also came from Everglades National Park. That snake measured 16 feet, 5 inches and was removed by Rahm Levinson.

How the competition works

The Florida Python Challenge is an annual competition run by the FWC that invites both professional and novice participants to remove Burmese pythons from designated public lands in South Florida. Registrants complete required online training covering species identification and humane removal methods before they are permitted to compete.

Prizes are awarded across multiple categories, including a grand prize for the most pythons removed overall and separate awards within the professional, novice, and military brackets. Additional recognition goes to the participant who removes the longest snake.

The event draws people from far outside Florida. This year's field of 907 participants came from 30 different states as well as from Canada and Vietnam, an indication of how much attention the Everglades python problem now commands beyond the state.

The competition period is deliberately compressed into 10 days, which concentrates effort and generates data that researchers can use. It is not, on its own, a population control program. FWC and its partners run year-round removal efforts through contractor programs that account for the large majority of pythons taken out of the ecosystem annually.

The Everglades problem

Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia and are not part of the natural South Florida ecosystem. They established a breeding population in and around Everglades National Park over the past several decades, with escaped and released pets widely understood to be the founding source. Hurricane Andrew, which destroyed a reptile breeding facility in 1992, is frequently cited as a contributing event.

The species has no natural predators in the Everglades once it reaches adult size, and adults can exceed 18 feet. Females can produce large clutches of eggs, and the snakes are extraordinarily difficult to detect. Their coloration provides near-perfect camouflage in sawgrass and mangrove environments, and researchers have documented cases in which pythons fitted with radio transmitters were nearly impossible to spot from a few feet away.

The ecological consequences are severe and well documented. Surveys in the core python range have recorded steep declines in populations of raccoons, opossums, bobcats, marsh rabbits, and other mid-sized mammals. Those declines cascade through the food web, affecting the wading birds and predators that depend on the same prey base. Pythons have also been documented consuming birds, alligators, and deer.

What 280 snakes actually accomplishes

The competition's removals should be understood in proportion. Population estimates for Burmese pythons in South Florida vary widely and carry substantial uncertainty, with credible figures ranging from the tens of thousands into the hundreds of thousands. Against a population of that scale, 280 snakes in 10 days does not meaningfully reduce numbers.

Researchers and FWC officials have consistently framed the Challenge in different terms. Its principal value lies in public awareness, in recruiting and training new removal agents, and in generating detection data across a wide geographic area during a concentrated period. Since the competition began, participants have removed more than 1,400 pythons across all editions of the event.

The larger removal effort runs through the Python Elimination Program operated by the South Florida Water Management District and a parallel FWC contractor program, which together pay trained removal agents hourly and by the foot for snakes taken year-round. Those programs have accounted for tens of thousands of removals since their establishment.

Detection remains the central technical obstacle. Researchers have tested scent-detection dogs, near-infrared imaging, environmental DNA sampling of waterways, and the scout snake method, in which radio-tagged males are tracked to locate breeding females. Each approach has produced results, and none has yet scaled to the level the problem requires.

Why this matters to Floridians

The Everglades is not a remote wilderness in economic terms. It is the recharge system for the aquifer that supplies drinking water to millions of South Florida residents, and it anchors a tourism and outdoor recreation economy that generates substantial revenue across Miami-Dade, Broward, Collier, and Monroe counties.

Florida has invested billions of public dollars in Everglades restoration through the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, a state and federal partnership focused on restoring water flow and quality across the system. An invasive apex predator that removes the mammal base from the ecosystem works directly against those restoration goals, since a restored hydrology cannot rebuild a food web whose middle has been eaten.

The python problem also serves as the state's most visible cautionary example on the exotic pet trade. Florida has tightened rules on the possession and sale of high-risk invasive reptiles in recent years, and the FWC maintains an amnesty program allowing owners to surrender exotic pets without penalty rather than releasing them.

Beyond pythons

Burmese pythons are the most prominent of Florida's invasive species problems but far from the only one. The state hosts established populations of green iguanas, tegu lizards, Cuban treefrogs, lionfish along the reef tract, and a long list of invasive plants including melaleuca, Brazilian pepper, and Old World climbing fern.

Florida's climate makes it unusually hospitable to tropical and subtropical species that would not survive winters farther north. Combined with the volume of international trade moving through Florida ports and airports, that has made the state one of the world's most significant hotspots for biological invasions.

The FWC encourages residents to report sightings of invasive species through its reporting hotline and mobile application, which feeds into the state's early detection and rapid response efforts. Early detection is far cheaper and more effective than management after a population establishes.

Who competes and why

The 907 participants who registered this year represent a mix that surprises people encountering the competition for the first time. Some are professional removal agents who hunt pythons year-round under contract. Many more are novices with no prior experience, drawn by the prize money, the conservation purpose, or the novelty of the undertaking.

The competition structures itself around that mix. Separate prize categories for professional and novice participants mean a first-time hunter is not competing directly against someone who spends every week in the Everglades, and a military category recognizes service members and veterans.

The work itself is considerably less glamorous than the coverage suggests. Successful python hunting generally means driving levee roads at low speed after dark, scanning the shoulders with lights, and covering long distances for few encounters. Participants describe hours of nothing punctuated by brief and physically demanding captures.

Humane dispatch requirements govern how removed snakes are handled, and participants complete training on the approved methods before competing. The FWC has emphasized those requirements as a condition of participation.

What the data tells researchers

Beyond the removals themselves, the competition generates a concentrated burst of survey effort that researchers can analyze.

Each captured snake carries information. Length and weight measurements track the size distribution of the population. Sex ratios inform reproductive modeling. Stomach contents document what the population is eating and where, feeding into the ongoing assessment of prey base depletion. Reproductive status in females indicates breeding activity and clutch sizes.

Location data matters as much as the specimens. Knowing where hunters searched and found nothing is nearly as informative as knowing where they found snakes, because it helps establish detection probability across different habitat types. That figure is central to any attempt to estimate total population from observed captures.

The 16-foot, 5-inch snake removed from Everglades National Park this year sits near the upper end of what researchers encounter, and large females are disproportionately significant because reproductive output scales with size.

The long-term outlook

Wildlife managers working the python problem generally avoid the word eradication. The consensus assessment is that removing Burmese pythons entirely from South Florida is not achievable with any currently available technology, and the realistic objective is suppression: holding the population down enough to allow native species some relief and to slow the expansion of the python range northward.

Range expansion is the concern that extends beyond South Florida. Pythons have been documented progressively farther north over time, and the northern limit of their range is set principally by cold tolerance. Individual snakes have survived cold events that models predicted they would not, which raises the possibility of selection for cold hardiness within the population.

How far north the species can ultimately establish is an open scientific question with substantial implications for the rest of the state. Central Florida wildlife would face the same pressure the Everglades has absorbed.

Research into genetic control methods, improved detection technology, and targeted removal of reproductive females continues across multiple institutions, including Florida universities and federal agencies. None of it has yet produced a tool that changes the fundamental math.

What's next

The FWC is expected to continue the Python Challenge as an annual event, with registration typically opening in the spring ahead of a summer competition window. The return of Everglades National Park as a partner location this year expanded the accessible competition area, and its continued participation would preserve that expansion.

Year-round removal programs continue regardless of the competition calendar. Trained removal agents working under contract with the water management district and FWC operate across South Florida throughout the year, and their cumulative totals dwarf what any single 10-day event produces.

For Floridians, the results announced this week land as they usually do: as an impressive individual achievement, a useful public awareness moment, and a reminder that the underlying problem remains far larger than the tools currently available to address it. Rahill's 96 snakes represent a genuinely remarkable effort. The Everglades will still have pythons in it tomorrow.