House GOP Scoffs At S. Fla. Python Problem
WASHINGTON (CBSMiami.com) – Anyone who has traveled through the Everglades knows that large snakes like the Burmese Python are putting the ecosystem at risk.
But an attempt to control the python population is running into the same old partisan gridlock everything else in Washington is hitting.
According to Politico, the Interior Department is proposing a rule that would designate the Burmese python and eight other snakes species as "injurious." That would make it illegal to import them or transport them across state lines.
Florida Senator Bill Nelson has been one of the champions of the rule after hearing estimates as high as 100,000 or more pythons are in the Everglades.
But, House Republicans are labeling the new rule as the latest in a "regulatory tsunami" of economy destroying rules coming from the Obama administration. House GOP said in a new report that the snake ban could "devastate a small but thriving sector of the economy," Politico reported.
House Republicans said that cold weather elsewhere in the country could keep the pythons from spreading beyond South Florida, according to Politico.
