Long before most of us were born, wildlife biologists became concerned about the decline in Louisiana’s alligator population.
Back in the 1950s, poaching was a problem.
Alligator hides commanded a high price. Shoes, boots, belts, hatbands and even alligator pants. Yes, a national catalog priced a pair of women’s alligator pants for the handsome price of $10,000.
So, what nefarious outlaw (oops, redundant) could pass up the chance of taking a few gators and move them into a network of buyers and tanners for such a grand reward?
Allen Ensminger (God rest his soul) worked at Rockefeller Refuge way back then and outlined the problem, got federal and state enforcement to target poachers and proceeded in groundbreaking alligator research.
He became the alligator guru of sorts, and within a few years anyone who wanted to know about the American alligator knocked on Ensminger’s door.
Ensminger discovered, for instance, that the temperature in a nest of maybe a hundred or so alligator eggs determined the sex of the tiny alligators that would emerge weeks later.
He incubated eggs in a laboratory and provided the world with proof of experiments, and showed the world how Louisiana was going to restore the alligator to its rightful place among the denizens of The Pelican State.
Alligator farms
Advance a few years and the next move was to set up alligator farms and a program to remove a specific number of eggs from nests. The eggs would be hatched in temperature-controlled environs with a plan to return a percentage of the hatch to the wild when the gators were large enough to fend for themselves. If memory serves, the release was penned at 16%, which biologists determined was the survival rate of a three-foot-long gator in the wild.
The released gators had a special band affixed to a foot for identification.
That percentage remained for at least three decades until landowners alerted state wildlife biologists that they were up to their knees in gators. Same was true on state-owned lands in prime gator country.
The release percentage was putting too many gators back into areas where wild gators were doing a bang-up job of rearing their own progeny.
All the while private landowners could apply, and usually receive, a number of alligator “tags,” which allowed them to take a number of gators during a 30-day season usually in September.
The landowners used the tags to sell the hides — a demand for meat came later — for a pretty penny. All was right then.
Still, the alligator population flourished. It took a few years to come up with a much lower release percentage — in the 7-9% range — and the move appeared to slow the in-the-wild population.
Prices plummet
It was around that time when the prices paid for alligator hides declined, rather plummeted, to the point where landowners didn’t feel the urge to take as many gators as they once did. It was work, hard work, most days in sweltering heat, and even though the landowner now could sell taken-and-tagged gators “on the hoof,” it wasn’t as profitable a venture as it was in the past.
And, guess what, the alligator population exploded. Hides were not as valuable as the meat, and the meat, well, is usually not a mainstay on most restaurant menus. Yes, it’s tasty, but it takes a lot more prep time than chicken wings or shrimp for a cocktail or a remoulade.
Alligators are so prolific in South Louisiana that they are becoming a nuisance, and you can discard the chuckles we hear from golf announcers upon spying a 12-footer sunning on a 12th fairway when the PGA comes to visit Westwego annually for the Zurich Classic.
Yeah, funny for them. Not so funny for the guy who received a ticket earlier this year for killing what was described as a three-foot gator that invaded his backyard not too far from the Classic’s golf course.
Wildlife and Fisheries sent out a notice that the department should be contacted for nuisance control.
Living in a well-inhabited area in Baton Rouge, it’s doubtful a gator is going to stroll in from my neighbor’s backyard, but there has to be something said for the guy who’s going to take out a gator in his backyard, especially if the guy has children or a pet dog or cat, any one which can become a gator’s next meal.
This isn’t trying to start a run killing a wandering gator, but if a wild, frothing-at-the-mouth dog invaded his yard, it’s likely no charges would have been filed.
That incident came after a long-time friend and bass fisherman sent a note about all the gators he’s seeing in his beloved Lake Verret and the Atchafalaya Basin. To condense his letter, he said he’s seeing way too many gators, as many as 50 lining one canal, and that many more in a couple other places.
We don’t have an answer right now, but with Wildlife and Fisheries using lottery hunts and bidding out lands for alligator hunters, maybe we need to expand the number of lottery hunters and open more territory for bids.
Otherwise, it looks like we’ll be more than knee-deep in alligators.