The Florida Python Challenge may have just ended, but one hunter already has her sights set on next year.
"I set a goal to catch over 1,000 pythons, and I am very close to that right now," Donna Kalil told NBC affiliate WFLA. "By next Python Challenge, hopefully I'll be able to win the grand prize. I tried real hard this year, and I'll try even harder."
Kalil, a contractor with the South Florida Water Management District who is also a python removal specialist that leads the group Everglades Avengers, became this year's Florida Python Challenge runner-up by catching 19 snakes.
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That's just one shy of the crowned champion, Ronald Kiger, who took home the $10,000 grand prize after the 10-day hunt in the Florida Everglades.
But don't feel too bad for her; Kalil still got a $2,500 prize for her bounty in the professional category. She said one of the very last pythons she caught was 12 feet and 1 inch long.
"They're very difficult to catch because they're very quick, so you have to be really careful on how you get to it, and don't scare it away before you can come up to it and catch it right behind the head and wrestle it out of the swamp," Kalil says.
In an Instagram post, she described helping native wildlife while on the hunt.
"I can't tell you how many snakes and frogs we moved off the road saving them from car strikes," she wrote. "We also moved dead animals off the road because one night we saw a banded water snake eating a squished frog that was on the road. He would have been road kill too had we not stopped to make sure cars went around us as he finished his meal."
This year, more than 800 people from 33 states and Canada participated in the challenge, which was meant to bring awareness to the threat that these pythons pose to the ecosystem. Hunters removed 195 Burmese pythons from the wild.
The challenge occurred in mid-August. Hunters were tasked with humanely killing the Burmese pythons and turning in the carcasses to any of the contest’s three check stations in South Florida.
The challenge wasn’t just meant for hunters to win the share of about $25,000 in prizes. It also served to raise awareness about the dangers of Burmese pythons, like how they affect native snakes, can spread diseases amongst native animals and have high mercury levels that are dangerous for human consumption.
Biologist Jeff Corwin was emphatic: "They have no native predators, so they have totally overtaken the ecosystem... They completely out compete the native wildlife. They either push it out or they eat it to extinction. How bad is it? This is how bad: 90% of the mammals that live in the Everglades have been eaten by pythons."
As for Kalil, she remains dedicated to removing pythons from the Everglades.
"All in all, in my opinion, this event is a net positive for the environment because we have people who care about the environment getting out there and making a positive difference," she wrote on Instagram.
And if history is any indication, she'll clinch that grand prize next year. This year's grand-prize winner, Ronald Kiger, was last year's runner-up.
