The Everglades National Park (ENP) and the "precipitous decline of mammals"

A sobering report released by The Royal Society Publishing on March 18th paints a very dark future for the ENP. A future with the invasive Burmese pythons (Python molurus bivittatus) destroying the fragile ecosystem. The research by Robert A. McCleery et al studied the rapid decline of the marsh rabbit population. Here is an excerpt (from the opening abstract):

To address the ongoing debate over the impact of invasive species on native terrestrial wildlife, we conducted a large-scale experiment to test the hypothesis that invasive Burmese pythons (Python molurus bivittatus) were a cause of the precipitous decline of mammals in Everglades National Park (ENP). Evidence linking pythons to mammal declines has been indirect and there are reasons to question whether pythons, or any predator, could have caused the precipitous declines seen across a range of mammalian functional groups. Experimentally manipulating marsh rabbits, we found that pythons accounted for 77% of rabbit mortalities within 11 months of their translocation to ENP and that python predation appeared to preclude the persistence of rabbit populations in ENP. On control sites, outside of the park, no rabbits were killed by pythons and 71% of attributable marsh rabbit mortalities were classified as mammal predations. Burmese pythons pose a serious threat to the faunal communities and ecological functioning of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem, which will probably spread as python populations expand their range. [emphasis added]

You can read about the Marsh Rabbit here. The rabbit's Conservation Status is of "Least Concern"; although not within the ENP it seems.