Snakes on planes are wreaking havoc on the ground.
Burmese pythons and eight other constrictor snakes brought in from other countries are threatening American wildlife — as well as the lives of their owners, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar warned yesterday at Kennedy Airport as he proposed a ban on imports of the slithery serpents.
“There has been concern of these snakes killing children,” Salazar said at a press conference with US Fish and Wildlife Service officials at JFK, a major gateway for wild animals coming into the country.
Last June, a pet Burmese python strangled a 2-year-old girl in her bedroom in Oxford, Fla.
At least a dozen people, including five kids, have been killed in the United States by pet pythons since 1980, according to the Humane Society.
Burmese pythons and other constrictor snakes released into the wild are overrunning native species in Florida.
More than 1,200 constrictors have been removed from Everglades National Park since 2000.
“Even though we’re working so hard, these constrictor snakes are breeding,” Salazar said.
“The Burmese python and these other alien snakes are destroying some of our nation’s most treasured — and fragile — ecosystems.”
Under his proposal, nine types of pythons and anacondas from Africa and South America would be added to a list of species banned from being imported into the United States.
Last year, JFK handled 27,000 shipments of wildlife from overseas valued at more than $1 billion — about 16 percent of all wildlife imports.
And those were just the legal imports. Millions of dollars worth of illegal animals likely got past Customs agents around the nation.
A Queens man was arrested last month when officials found 16 live bony-tongue fish in a suitcase he brought in from Malaysia.
The 5-inch to foot-long fish are treasured as pets by some Asian cultures. People who believe the fish protect them from death will buy them for $5,000 to $10,000 apiece.
At O’Hare Airport in Chicago last October, an odor-detecting beagle sniffed out three pounds of live snails in a suitcase from London. Some live snails are considered destructive pests that threaten agriculture.
People have been badly sickened by imported wildlife. In 2003, 71 people in the Midwest contracted monkeypox from prairie dogs infected at a pet shop by rodents imported from Africa.
Even dead animals are a danger. In 2006, a Brooklyn musician nearly died of anthrax he contracted from unprocessed goatskins imported from the Ivory Coast.