Burmese pythons get most of the headlines — and with good reason. This year's Florida Python Challenge drew 907 participants over ten days, pulling 280 pythons from the Everglades. Veteran hunter Tom Rahill topped all competitors by catching 96 snakes on his own. Just months earlier, in January, contracted hunter Carl Jackson and his family removed a 202-pound, nearly 17-foot female from Big Cypress National Preserve, the second-heaviest ever recorded in the state. Pythons first arrived through the exotic pet trade in the 1970s and '80s, with a 1992 hurricane widely believed to have released additional snakes when it destroyed a breeding facility near the Everglades.
But Florida's subtropical warmth, abundant water, and limited natural checks on non-native species have made the state hospitable to a much longer list of intruders. Argentine black and white tegus — large, South American lizards — have established breeding populations across South and Central Florida. Their broad diet, which includes bird eggs, small mammals, and other reptiles, makes them a particular threat to ground-nesting species like gopher tortoises and burrowing owls.
Green iguanas, originally from Central and South America, are now a fixture along canals and seawalls throughout South Florida. Beyond competing with native species for food and habitat, their burrowing damages levees, sidewalks, and seawalls. Florida added green iguanas to its "Dirty Dozen" list of worst invasive species in early 2026. Lionfish, first spotted off Florida in the 1980s after aquarium releases, have since spread through the Caribbean and into the Gulf of Mexico, outcompeting native reef fish with no natural predators to slow them down.
Two more species round out the picture. Feral hogs are found in nearly every corner of the state — from Everglades wetlands to Panhandle forests — where their rooting behavior damages soil, native vegetation, and crops, making them among Florida's most agriculturally destructive animals. Cane toads, introduced in the 1930s and '40s to control pests in sugarcane fields, have spread far beyond that original role. They secrete a toxin capable of sickening or killing dogs, and they compete with and prey on native frogs, insects, and small fish.
This story was first reported by the Times of India.
