Nearly 800 people signed up for the month-long “Python Challenge” that started Saturday afternoon. The vast majority — 749 — are members of the general public who lack the permits usually required to harvest pythons on public lands.
“We feel like anybody can get out in the Everglades and figure out how to try and find these things,” said Nick Wiley, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “It’s very safe, getting out in the Everglades. People do it all the time.”
Twenty-eight python permit holders also joined the hunt at several locations in the Everglades. The state is offering cash prizes to whoever brings in the longest python and whoever bags the most pythons by the time the competition ends at midnight Feb. 10.
This is awesome. Using the power of incentives and the willingness to the many to take advantage of what would regularly be viewed as a market failure may in fact solve a different inefficient allocation of ecological resources. An odd case of the theory of second best?