Hong Kong - One hundred pythons a year captured in Hong Kong are being taken over the border to China and released in a policy that experts say may upset the former British colony's biodiversity. Burmese pythons found troubling residents or animals in Hong Kong are being taken to a government animal management centre for temporary keeping and then sent periodically in batches for release in China, officials confirmed Sunday.
But experts say that taking mostly full-grown pythons out of Hong Kong's snake population is potentially inhumane and may cause localized explosions in the populations of wild boar, deer and other python prey.
They urged the government to micro-chip and track pythons, an endangered species, and conduct a detailed survey of their population and habits so that a knowledge-based management policy can be drawn up.
The policy has become public after an incident near a family walk on the edge of a country park in Hong Kong's rural New Territories a fortnight ago where a woman battled a 4.5 metre python to save her pet dog from being crushed to death. The python remains at large.
Asked about the city's python population, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said it was "very difficult to get an accurate estimate of the number of pythons in Hong Kong because of the secretive nature of snakes."
Over the past three years, around 100 pythons a year have been captured, taken to an animal-management centre for temporary keeping and then sent to undisclosed rural areas in mainland China for release to the wild, the spokeswoman said.
The policy was questioned by snake catcher Dave Willott, who tried to trace the python involved in the attack a fortnight ago. "If they are going to take them to China, the very least they should do is what they do in other countries," he said.
"They should make sure the animal is healthy and well fed. I am worried this is not happening because they haven't got the facilities to do that. So what they are doing is taking an animal which is stressed and undernourished and dumping it in a strange area.
"Also if they don't do health checks, they could be carrying all sorts of disease and introducing them into a new population."
Ideally, the pythons should be released back into the wild in Hong Kong, Willott said.
Zoologist Paul Crow, senior conversation officer at Hong Kong's Kadoori Farm wildlife park, estimated that Hong Kong is now home to thousands of Burmese pythons but said a proper study was needed.
"There's a huge gap in our knowledge about the species and you can't manage a species properly until you know about it," he said.
Capturing and deporting large snakes may just remove the breeding population and leave a juvenile population that will suddenly begin to devour larger prey when they reached maturity, he cautioned.
