No, they really aren't an environmental issue. I realize that everyone thinks that The Everglades and Louisiana are the same, but they aren't. We are quite a bit north of the Everglades, and we get more freezing temperatures every year. Those temperature extremes would kill any kind of python.
While there's some evidence that burmese pythons are breeding in the Everglades, ball pythons are a different situation. First, the buremese pythons generally go into the wild as top predators because someone has let one go after it becomes too big to keep. A twelve foot burmese is going to have few natural enemies. A four or five foot ball python is going to have many natural enemies.
According the Louisiana Marine Education Resource page, the three conditions needed for an invasive species to become a nuisance are:
1. The species has to have prolific reproduction.
2. The species has to have advanced adaptability to environmental stresses.
3. The species has to have advanced ability to compete for food.
Ball Pythons don't have these characteristics.
They don't reach sexual maturity until they are three years old in captivity and may need an extra year or two in the wild. When they begin reproducing, they produce only about six to ten eggs a year and don't usually produce every year in the wild. Typically, they don't live more than about ten years in the wild. A male and female baby nutria, Louisiana's worst invasive animal species, will produce about 500 offspring within four years. They begin producing at six months and produce about ten or twelve little ones a year. That fertility is why they are a successful invasive species. In the same four years, a male and female ball python hatchling might produce six more ball pythons. With the nutria, predators can kill quite a few of the young without changing the 500 nutria produced. With ball pythons, if a predator gets either of them before year four, no babies will be produced.
Ball pythons are not superbly adapted to environmental stresses. They are never top predators as the big burmese pythons are. Their natural range is within about 20 degrees of the equator. The Everglades are about 26 degrees, and Louisiana is near 30 degrees. The difference impacts how much cold weather we have, and the cold weather impacts their survival.
Ball pythons wouldn't have any competitive advantage in getting food in Louisiana. They are used to eating certain rats native to Africa. They convert to domestic rats and mice easily enough in many cases, but they have no traits that would make them better at hunting than our native kingsnakes are.
Another factor that weighs against them being released to become a nuisance is that adult females have real value in the breeding world. I can see how finding a market for a 12 foot burmese python could be difficult. Ball python breeders will snap up any healthy adult female for use in their projects. Typical market value of a female of breeding size is about $300. There's no reason to release a snake that one could sell for $300.
Bill
Very good information. I'm not a snake person so I know less than diddley about them. And, based on what you wrote, it looks like another ignoratn legislature reacting to emotion and not knowledge. Georgia did the same thing when they banned quaker parrots as pets.