The report says that quite a few of these snakes pose potentially high risks to wildlife. What does that mean?
The practice of keeping a non-native animal in an area where it might survive in the wild runs the risk that, should the animal escape or be intentionally released, it could survive, reproduce, and establish populations in the wild, as Burmese pythons have in the Florida Everglades. Non-native species can be extremely detrimental to native species, and some non-native species can transmit serious diseases. Giant constrictors are capable of eating almost every type of land-dwelling vertebrate where they occur, but they are more likely to eat birds and mammals. If a bird or mammal is already rare (perhaps because of habitat loss, or competition or predation from another introduced species), the addition of a novel predator could tip the balance against the native prey species. For example, the endangered Key Largo woodrat, which occurs naturally only on Key Largo in the Upper Florida Keys, has lost much of its natural habitat to development, and is harmed by competition from introduced b
