I care about the Everglades and I'm sure plenty of others do as well. Some of the fauna in that "dumpster" actually belongs there. You made some broad observations about roads and human habitations and predicted the Everglades will become an urban, polluted cesspool. Can you be a bit more specific as to what geographic area you're referring to? 1.5 million acres of the Everglades is set aside as a national park.
Makes sense, but really this is nothing new. It's always going to be much easier for most people to blame something scaly or slimy than something cute and furry.
Precisely- we like to focus on the "creepy" megafauna when in reality it is far nastier and more threatening diminutive species that truly threaten the ecology, like the assorted foreign beetles and flies and fungus that come over on un-inspected shipping pallets that are killing off forests. I recently saw a talk by an invasive species expert, from an entomological background, and there is an uncanny correlation between the increase in global trade and the number of invasive species here and everywhere else on earth. The last time we had a mixing of the continents, i.e. Pangaea, there was a massive extinction event.
And nile crocs and monitors and caimans and a million pest insects (citrus greening anyone? red bay ambrosia beetle, one of sixty some odd invasive ambrosia beetles in the US now?)... just have a suitable habitat and lots and lots of trade going on here, pet and otherwise.
I absolutely agree. Here is the issue- on the one hand you have the uninformed media and legislators, etc. giving the exotic pet enthusiasts a bad name by making dramatic and not always accurate statements about many facets of it. On the other hand, some responsibility for the bad name needs to be assumed by us as we (not us specifically, but buyers as a general population) contribute to it by letting "free-roaming" snakes strangle children in their beds, released/escaped exotics running rampant all over Florida, and so on. The media makes it seem more prevalent simply because all those stories are exciting to tell so they get more coverage than they deserve. And we (again, not us specifically) make it possible by allowing morons who think a free roaming boa is safe to have around an infant. If we simply cut out the idiots then the media has nothing to cover and viola! no more bad press.
This is not true though. There are plenty of people hunting down hogs on purpose (even laws allowing the pursuit of feral hogs onto private property when hunting them!), lots of feral cat programs for spaying/destroying, etc. They just aren't covered on the news because they aren't that interesting to the public and are everyday battles. They are not protected at all, all of the examples you provided are actively pursued and eradicated when possible. The snake is more rare and more exotic so it gets attention. It's like saying no one cares to do anything about car crashes because all you ever hear about on TV are plane crashes. Not a fair comparison by virtue of the "interest" factor which news relies on. News channels that don't stay interesting ultimately don't get to make any news at all.
Hog hunting is not allowed in the Everglades National Park. You cannot bring dogs in there(except for the Labs that the FWS people have trained to hunt pythons), and until the recent python hunting, you could not bring a firearm in there unless again, you were with a law enforcement agency. There are places where there is a lot of hog hunting(having been a hogger myself, I'm very familiar with those), but they honestly aren't doing anything but forcing them to reproduce faster, same with coyotes. Like you said, once an invasive specie is entrenched, it's here to stay. Eventually, the environment itself will adapt around the invasives, as has happened with many already(we all know of many common spiders that aren't native to the US, but are found here in large numbers), or the invasives will meet some outside force that limits their ability to expand, like the weather. The best we can do is harvest the excess through hunting, etc. if they are a problematic specie.
That doesn't mean nothing is being done about hogs. You can hunt Big Cypress and basically all of the other otherwise protected wildlife management areas in the region. I don't understand how that "forces" them to reproduce faster. Can you explain what you mean by that? You mean perhaps that they are killing off part of the population so there is more room for new individuals that would've otherwise been outcompeted? They've only really been here for about 100 years or so and since that time the only significant cause of mortality is hunting/trapping. Unfortunately, shooting them is only an effective means of control in less hospitable habitats which is of course why they continue to flourish here in the South East despite extensive hunting. It's not from lack of trying.
Many animal species respond to increased pressure from hunting/trapping by either having larger litters, or by breeding more frequently, and in the case of feral hogs, it's both. Feral sows also breed at an earlier age than domestic pigs and can produce up to three litters per year. Coyotes in areas where they are hunted extensively often have litters of over 10 puppies; I've personally counted a litter of 13 following a female. In Yellowstone, prior to the re-introduction of wolves, coyote litters averaged 2-5 pups, and now they average 6-8 pups, still fewer than where human hunting pressures are heavy, but more than when the coyotes had no real predator.
If you check that link you'll see that's not exactly true of hogs. What happens instead, under pressure, is that the younger, smaller females who do usually breed and make it therefor virtually impossible to eradicate them via hunting/trapping, will stop breeding altogether. Since it is the larger females who are statistically more likely to be shot than their smaller counterparts it actually decreases the net number of births in the feral hog population. Less are breeding and the ones that are breeding are less likely to survive. This is also true of areas where there is natural pressure- unsuitable habitats result in no young females breeding. Of course this is kind of a catch-22 because they "good" habitats are either places we need (agriculture, etc.) or rich ecosystems so they're impossible to kill of in these settings but in places with more bare needs not being met, in less desirable or ecologically rich territory they can quite successfully be extirpated.