Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 384 is a conversation with professional python hunter Kevin Pavlidis, the Snakeaholic, who is contracted by the state of Florida to remove invasive Burmese pythons from the Everglades and who caught the Florida state-record python at 18 feet, 9.25 inches and 104 pounds. He explains how he hunts these snakes day and night, makes a data-driven case that the real Everglades population is likely in the millions rather than the official 100,000 to 300,000, and describes how pythons have erased mammals across huge stretches of the River of Grass.
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Kevin Pavlidis, known online as the Snakeaholic, is a professional Burmese python hunter contracted by the state of Florida to remove invasive pythons from the Everglades. He wrestles alligators at Everglades Holiday Park in western Fort Lauderdale, runs educational reptile content on Instagram and YouTube under the Snakeaholic name, and holds the Florida state record for the largest python ever removed.
Kevin caught the Florida state-record Burmese python at 18 feet, 9.25 inches long, weighing 104 pounds. That fish broke the overall length record for any snake ever pulled out of the Everglades, edging past previous program records that topped out around 17 to 18 feet.
Kevin argues the commonly repeated estimate of 100,000 to 300,000 was never rooted in science. Using a North Carolina study that found Burmese pythons are detected at only one-half to one percent of the actual population, and applying that to the roughly 5,000 snakes the programs had removed at the time, he reaches a conservative figure around 500,000 and, factoring in how vast and inaccessible the Everglades are, believes the true number is in the millions.
Kevin does not think the pythons can be eliminated with current technology, given how vast the Everglades are and how well-built these reptiles are for the environment. He reframes the mission: he does not expect to remove every snake, but every python he takes out is one less invasive apex predator eating native wildlife, which gives native species a chance to rebound.
Kevin says pythons have borderline eliminated mammals across the Eastern Everglades. In the densest python areas you no longer see raccoons, bobcats, opossums, or foxes. With the mammals gone, the snakes have shifted to a diet that is now roughly seventy percent birds and alligators and thirty percent remaining mammals like rats, and they are even reaching endangered species such as the Key Largo woodrat.
It depends on the season. For most of the year South Florida is hot and the pythons are almost exclusively nocturnal, which Kevin says makes for anticlimactic captures because the snakes think they cannot be seen and he can often just walk up and pick them up. When winter cold fronts push them into daytime activity, captures are trickier because the snakes know they are visible and frequently take off, forcing him to chase them down.
The python story in the Everglades gets told constantly, and most of the time it gets told with numbers nobody can actually source. Kevin is different. He is out there in the muck doing the work for the state, he caught the biggest one anybody has ever recorded, and when he talks about population he walks you through the math instead of repeating a headline. I wanted to hear how he thinks about a problem that may not be solvable, and why he keeps showing up anyway. Press play in the YouTube player above.
Kevin holds the Florida state record at 18 feet, 9.25 inches and 104 pounds, a fish that broke the overall length record for any snake ever taken out of the Everglades. He describes what an animal that size is actually capable of, why a snake that big represents a breeding machine that could carry a clutch of more than a hundred eggs, and how the captures themselves can be strangely anticlimactic. Hear him tell the record story in the episode.
This is the part of the conversation that stuck with me. Kevin lays out why the 100,000-to-300,000 figure everyone repeats has no scientific origin, then builds his own estimate off a detection-rate study and the number of snakes the programs have actually removed. He lands on a conservative half a million and a realistic number in the millions. He is careful to frame it as his read of the facts, not pessimism. Listen to him walk through the math in the player above.
Kevin describes driving an hour or two north of the python zone, stepping onto a dirt road, and being struck by something that should be ordinary: mammal tracks everywhere. The reason it surprises him is that in his Everglades hunting grounds there are none. The raccoons, bobcats, opossums, and foxes are simply gone, eaten out, and the snakes have moved on to birds and alligators. It is one of the clearest pictures of invasive-species impact I have heard. Hear it in his own words.
Kevin does not believe the pythons can be eradicated, and he says so plainly, yet he reframes the whole effort around a single idea: every snake he removes is one less invasive apex predator pulling native animals out of the food web, which buys those native populations a little room to recover. He also gets into why South Florida has the highest rate of invasive species anywhere on the planet. Press play to hear how he stays motivated in an unwinnable-looking fight.
▶ Watch on YouTube · 🎧 Listen now
The day after talking to Kevin, the image I could not shake was the dirt road covered in mammal tracks an hour north of the python zone, and the silence of the ground where he actually works. That contrast tells the whole story better than any population number.
What I respect about Kevin is that he refuses to oversell or undersell it. He gives you the math, he gives you the reality, and then he goes back out and removes one more snake. Listen to the whole thing, because the way he thinks about this problem is as interesting as the record fish.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Kevin Pavlidis, known as the Snakeaholic, is a professional Burmese python hunter contracted by the state of Florida to remove invasive pythons from the Everglades, and he holds the Florida state record for the largest python ever taken at 18 feet, 9.25 inches and 104 pounds. He is a reptile expert who wrestles alligators at Everglades Holiday Park in western Fort Lauderdale and shares educational reptile and conservation content on Instagram and YouTube under the Snakeaholic name.
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