Joe Rogan Experience #2020 - Python Cowboy
Narrator, Narrator, Joe Rogan (host), Mike "Python Cowboy" Kimmel (guest), Narrator, Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Narrator and Narrator, Joe Rogan Experience #2020 - Python Cowboy explores python Cowboy battles invasive predators, bureaucracy, and Florida’s dying Everglades Joe Rogan interviews "Python Cowboy" Mike, a Florida hunter and conservationist who removes invasive pythons and iguanas while advocating for better Everglades management. They detail how Burmese pythons, cane toads, iguanas, and other exotics are devastating native wildlife and infrastructure, and how regulations often block effective control efforts. Mike recounts near‑fatal encounters with giant pythons, his use of highly trained dogs to find underground nests, and a suspected history of intentional exotic releases for profit. The conversation widens into water mismanagement, Everglades politics, occult encounters in abandoned facilities, and broader worries about human tinkering with ecosystems, from genetically modified mosquitoes to uncontrolled development.
Python Cowboy battles invasive predators, bureaucracy, and Florida’s dying Everglades
Joe Rogan interviews "Python Cowboy" Mike, a Florida hunter and conservationist who removes invasive pythons and iguanas while advocating for better Everglades management. They detail how Burmese pythons, cane toads, iguanas, and other exotics are devastating native wildlife and infrastructure, and how regulations often block effective control efforts. Mike recounts near‑fatal encounters with giant pythons, his use of highly trained dogs to find underground nests, and a suspected history of intentional exotic releases for profit. The conversation widens into water mismanagement, Everglades politics, occult encounters in abandoned facilities, and broader worries about human tinkering with ecosystems, from genetically modified mosquitoes to uncontrolled development.
Key Takeaways
Invasive pythons are decimating Everglades mammals and reshaping the food web.
Burmese pythons have wiped out 90–99% of small mammals like raccoons, rabbits, and otters in parts of the Everglades and heavily reduced deer, while increasingly preying on alligators and wading birds.
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Management is possible, but current policies make meaningful control unlikely.
Mike argues that with broad public participation, better access (airboats, buggies), and dog teams, python populations can be significantly reduced; instead, national park rules, vehicle bans, and limited contractor programs keep efforts shallow and road‑bound.
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Highly trained dogs are a breakthrough tool for finding hidden pythons and nests.
His dog Otto and others can locate underground pythons and nests that humans almost never find; this season alone his team found more nests than had been found in the state’s entire prior history, stopping dozens of snakes before they hatch.
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Well‑intended bans on exotic pets can backfire and worsen invasions.
Florida’s bans on owning iguanas and tegus have prompted some owners to dump animals rather than have them euthanized, eliminating responsible keepers and free removal via the pet trade while leaving only law‑breakers and wild breeders.
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Iguanas cause massive infrastructure damage and expensive repairs.
Green iguanas undermine foundations, seawalls, levees, and roads with burrows; one small town spent $1. ...
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Everglades decline is driven as much by water mismanagement as by invasives.
Levees, locks, agricultural interests, and development have blocked the natural southward water flow, causing toxic algal blooms, fish kills, and ecosystem collapse; restoring flow conflicts with existing cities and farmland, so political will is weak.
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Human tinkering with ecosystems repeatedly has unintended and long‑term consequences.
Examples range from imported cane toads and melaleuca trees to genetically modified mosquitoes and alleged exotic releases for farming; Mike and Rogan stress that once such decisions are made, they’re effectively irreversible at landscape scale.
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Notable Quotes
“We're never getting rid of the pythons or the iguanas. They're here to stay, but management is absolutely essential.”
— Python Cowboy (Mike)
“One snake gives birth to 70 snakes… it shows what we’re up against.”
— Python Cowboy (Mike)
“If you’re not looking for these snakes, you’re not finding them.”
— Python Cowboy (Mike)
“Florida is unlike any other place… it’s almost appropriate that all these invasives are there.”
— Joe Rogan
“This idea that we’re supposed to trust these guys that they know exactly how everything’s gonna work out—like, fuck off.”
— Joe Rogan
Questions Answered in This Episode
What specific policy changes would most immediately improve python and iguana control without causing new ecological problems?
Joe Rogan interviews "Python Cowboy" Mike, a Florida hunter and conservationist who removes invasive pythons and iguanas while advocating for better Everglades management. ...
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How feasible is it to scale up dog‑based python detection teams across the entire Everglades, and what would that realistically cost?
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Could Florida ever design a legal market or bounty system for invasive species that incentivizes removal while avoiding past abuses?
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How should the public weigh the risks of emerging biotechnologies (like GMO mosquitoes) against more traditional, imperfect control methods?
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What lessons from the Gladesmen’s history and exclusion from the Everglades could guide more effective, community‑based conservation today?
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Transcript Preview
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Yeehaw.
Am I wearing these?
Yeah.
Okay.
Wear 'em. You feel weird?
No, I'm just ...
Have you done a podcast before?
I have. Uh, not quite to this level, I don't think, but ...
Uh, how did you get ... first of all, how bad is the python and invasive species situation in Florida?
It, it is bad. It's definitely bad. You know, you, you have these TV shows that make especially the python thing seem like it's a lot worse than it is. Um, you know, or a lot easier than it is, I should say. It's a bad situation. We have our native wildlife being wiped out. But it's not like you're just gonna go out there and you're tripping over pythons, you know? It, it's not the case. Uh, I search very, very hard to find them.
There was an estimate of 500,000 pythons in the Everglades.
C- could be more. Um, I personally think there's less.
Really?
Uh, I do, I do. We don't really know what's out there. Uh, the estimates have been 100,000 all the way up to 3,000,000.
Mm.
And-
How do they estimate?
That's the thing. They're just going off of captures, really, and the decline of native wildlife, which there's other factors at play when it comes to the decline of our native wildlife. Obviously, pythons are eating up our native wildlife in the Everglades without a doubt. Uh, there is a lot of evidence of that. But our Everglades is a struggling place as it is right now between the water management, the overpopulation of our state. We have a growing panther population that we're looking like we're having trouble sustaining. And, um, all-
Sustaining? How so?
Uh, well, we see a lot of depredation in Collier and Henry County, um, from-
And when you mean depredation, you mean attacking wildlife?
Uh, a- attacking not so much wildlife, but p-
Uh, excuse me. Um-
... pets and livestock.
Livestock.
Yes, sir.
Mm-hmm.
Um, a- and we just see that there's more panthers than we're accounting for, uh, just from, uh, vehicular deaths.
Mm-hmm.
So if, if the current panther numbers were accurate, uh, f- over 30% of the panther population dies every year just from motor vehicles. And, you know, that, that doesn't really seem right if y- if you think about that. There's no way a third of the population dies every year from motor vehicles and is continuing to grow and they're just not that stupid, you know what I mean?
So i- it's s- sort of an uncalculated, they haven't calculated it correctly, but you think there's more of them?
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