FWC, reptile keepers clear the air on Broward County python euthanization

State wildlife officers controversially killed nearly three dozen pythons and a boa constrictor in Broward County in April. Members of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) gave that incident their full attention during their meetings in Miami.

An internal investigation of the incident by FWC concluded officers followed protocol for the most part but made a mistake in killing the boa constrictor. New Executive Director Roger Young said all reports and body camera video from the incident are available to the public at request.

The situation began with a report to the agency of a reticulated python on the loose. Officers recovered the snake in the backyard of a residence nearby. It was 11 feet long. The python didn’t have a tag allowing it to be identified, so officers followed policy and investigated facilities nearby that could have had an escape or release of a snake.

“(Chris) Coffee’s facility was checked to determine if all snakes being held under constructive seizure at his location were accounted for,” Young said. “During this visit, Mr. Coffee and the FWC investigators discussed the future disposition of the seized snakes.”

Coffee didn’t say he was missing a snake, and FWC didn’t conclude the escaped snake came from that facility.

“But Mr. Coffee did request that FWC investigators euthanize these snakes rather than attempt to rehome the (34) prohibited snakes,” Young said. “That was upon his request and that is a fact.”

He said Coffee further requested the snakes be euthanized on-site. According to investigators, Coffee told them some of the snakes were starving and as a result, aggressive.

“We are looking at our protocols and procedures, and we are going to ensure that something like this never happens again,” Young said. “I have put a directive to all our investigators and staff that we will not be euthanizing any animals at this point unless it’s (an) exigent circumstance in the field regarding something else.”

The issue drew a notable crowd to speak at the meeting, led off by Phil Goss, president of the U.S. Association of Reptile Keepers (USARK).

“I think everyone can admit there were some mistakes made on April 6, and I hope we can learn from those and move forward on this,” Goss said. “One of the mistakes I would like to point out is in 2021, Commissioners were presented with data from staff that showed only about a dozen people in the state were working with reticulated pythons and/or Burmese pythons.

“None of those people were grandfathered and allowed to continue business even though, in the example of Coffee, he had permits and been licensed by FWC for over a decade. If we just allowed him to be grandfathered and keep doing business as long as he was in compliance, April 6 never would have happened.”

The 2021 rule prohibited possession of the snakes, and Coffee didn’t rehome them within the 90-day period to do so. An FWC enforcement action later required Coffee to continue caring for the snakes until the agency could do something about them, which ended up occurring with officers killing the snakes in April.

“They could’ve reached out to industry and said, ‘We have these animals in this state that are not supposed to be here, they are prohibited, there is an issue of getting them out,’” said Elizabeth Wisneski of USARK Florida.

“Reach out to the industry, let us work with you. Instead of just euthanizing these animals, there are people who really want them. There’s zoos, there’s places. I could’ve made calls and had them out of the state by morning.”