The Everglades used to be a python graveyard for every animal that lived there.
Now otters are moving back in – and DeSantis just celebrated the moment on social media.
An otter just claimed the exact den where hunters pulled a python nest two years ago – and DeSantis wants you to see it.
From Snake Pit to Otter Den in Two Years
Python Cowboy – Mike Kimmel, owner of Martin County Trapping & Wildlife Rescue – posted the video with a simple caption: years of work are paying off, and native wildlife is finally bouncing back.
DeSantis responded immediately: "Nice – get them pythons out of the glades!"
It's not sentiment.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2116209724685516804?a=0fih-9e19WEjQ0F1H8M&s=20
It's documentation of a turnaround most wildlife biologists didn't expect this fast.
Otters are what scientists call a keystone species – an animal whose presence signals the entire food web beneath it is functioning.
When pythons took over the Everglades, otters disappeared first.
They're extraordinarily sensitive to ecosystem disruption, which is exactly why their return matters more than any population count of raccoons or marsh rabbits.
Kimmel's team worked the same stretch of Everglades for five years before they started seeing otters return – and they didn't see the first one until just two years ago.
Now otters are taking over old python dens.
DeSantis Tripled Removals and Then Tripled Them Again
The numbers behind this moment are staggering.
In May through July of 2025 alone, Florida removed 1,022 pythons from the Everglades – compared to 343 during that same period in 2024.
In July 2025 specifically, hunters removed 748 pythons in a single month – more than the entire previous year's total combined.
DeSantis backed the surge with a $2 million investment in the state budget and a new partnership with Miami-based company Inversa Leathers, which created a commercial market for python skins.
Hunters are now paid 60% more per snake, and FWC's management workload dropped 89%.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2106391552310563268?a=T06cU9fcusDYQNM_9Ek&s=20
Since 2000, more than 23,000 Burmese pythons have been removed from Florida's wilds.
The Conservancy of Southwest Florida set a record this past season – 177 pythons weighing a combined 8,080 pounds pulled from a 200-square-mile area of Collier County between November 2025 and April 2026.
Their biologists also removed an estimated 4,100 unhatched eggs.
Every breeding female pulled before she lays represents roughly 70 snakes that never enter the food chain.
What Pythons Actually Did to the Everglades
The scale of the destruction is hard to overstate.
Burmese pythons entered the Everglades through the pet trade in the 1970s – released by owners who couldn't handle them.
Within decades, they had devastated native mammal populations across large sections of Everglades National Park.
A 2015 USGS study released 95 adult marsh rabbits into python territory.
Within 11 months, pythons had killed 77% of them – not foxes, not gators, not hawks.
Pythons.
The snakes don't compete with native predators – they eliminate the prey base those predators depend on.
Panthers, bobcats, and alligators were starving while pythons ate everything.
The Everglades supports more than 350 species of birds and 40 species of mammals.
Pythons were systematically working through the list.
This Is What Winning Looks Like
Environmental groups spent years fighting the expansion of this program.
When DeSantis moved to open Big Cypress National Preserve to python hunters, the South Florida Wildlands Association complained that the ATVs would disturb the habitat.
The ATVs disturbed the pythons.
DeSantis ignored them and funded hunters instead.
An otter moved into a python den.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/1980787203144892418?a=_HJLADuuQ4jHB2o0-KY&s=20
That's not a feel-good story – that's a measurable biological indicator that the Everglades food web is recovering in the exact locations where removal pressure has been highest.
DeSantis has now invested nearly $8 billion in Everglades restoration overall – water quality, water flow, invasive species removal.
The python program is the piece that's most visible, most immediate, and most satisfying to watch.
Because you can see exactly who's winning.
The people who worried about ATVs spooking the wildlife can come see the otter that just moved in.
Sources:
- Governor Ron DeSantis, "Governor Ron DeSantis Highlights Success of Everglades Python Removal Program," Florida Governor's Office, October 21, 2025.
- Angel Green, "748 Pythons Removed in Record-Breaking Capture from Florida's Everglades," WFTV, October 2025.
- Staff Report, "8,000 Pounds of Invasive Burmese Python Removed from the Florida Everglades," Popular Science, June 2026.
- Staff Report, "Florida Removes Record Haul of Invasive Pythons in Control Effort," Society of Environmental Journalists, June 17, 2025.
- South Florida Water Management District, "Burmese Pythons," SFWMD Government Portal.
- Larry M. Elkin, "Striking Back Against Invasive Pythons in Florida," Palisades Hudson Financial Group, 2019.
