It may seem strange to talk about 10,000 alligators dying as a thing worth celebrating, but hear me out.
Last month, the Louisiana Legislature gave the go-ahead to state wildlife officials to this fall in addition to the state’s already active commercial season. The new season will add about 10,000 tags to the 38,000 already offered in the state’s commercial program. In the new season, 5,000 hunters will be awarded two tags apiece. Each tag is good for one alligator.
The new season means hunters could take almost 50,000 alligators from Louisiana’s habitats this year. A little more than 50 years ago, that number would have been almost unthinkable. The state’s total alligator population was estimated to be fewer than 100,000.
Even if every tag is used, the new hunting season will barely make a dent in the current population, estimated to be around 3 million.
How we got here from where we were is a triumph of data-based conservation that involved all stakeholders, including landowners, conservationists, hunters and those who make alligator products.
By the 1960s, Louisiana’s alligators were in trouble. Poaching was rampant, regulations were ineffective. Many large landowners who leased their land for duck hunting, crawfishing or trapping tacitly allowed, if not supported, eradication of alligators, according to Bob Thomas, a naturalist and the director of the Center for Environmental Communication at Loyola University.
“If you see somebody with a light and a gunshot, he’s breaking the law, but helping you out,” Thomas said.
The solution conservationists came up with was simple. Landowners could lease marshes for egg collection by alligator farmers. who then had to return a portion of the hatched alligators to the marshes from which they came. The program created an economic incentive for those who previously would have turned a blind eye to poaching. It also provided an avenue for the legal sale of alligator products.
The truly ingenious part of the plan rested in the proportion of 4-foot alligators that egg collectors had to return to the marsh. Scientists had determined that, in the wild, about 17% of alligators that hatched survived to that length. So, if a collector took 100 eggs, they would have to return 17 4-foot alligators to the wild within two years. By modulating the proportion, wildlife officials could boost or slow the alligator population’s growth.
Also in the program, hunting was banned for about a decade. When it was allowed again, it was under tight restrictions that pushed hunters toward males and helped them avoid egg-laying females.
In other words, no one — hunters, landowners, those who want alligator products, conservationists or scientists — was left out of the process. The idea was radical in the way it married economic incentives with ecological goals.
But it almost didn’t happen. Environmentalists opposed it, and members of other state departments were also skeptical, Thomas told me.
But he said once it got going, the alligator population “exploded.” Now, the population is so robust that the addition of 10,000 tags to the state’s total is barely a blip.
Louisiana can increase the number of alligators killed by hunters because, for a half century, we’ve been so good at helping them live. And as a side benefit, the program generates an estimated $250 million in economic activity in Louisiana.
The alligator isn’t the only species that has made a comeback in Louisiana in recent decades: The black bear, the brown pelican and the bald eagle have as well. Those restorations were different, but they have had similar success.
None of these conservation efforts have been easy or happened overnight. It takes time and intentionality to bring back an animal that has dwindled due to human action. And there are plenty of species that are still in need of focused restoration.
State Sen. Robert Allain, R-Franklin, who sponsored the bill calling for the recreational season, called the alligator program “the greatest conservation story in America.” Politicians are prone to hyperbole, but in the alligator’s case, that’s certainly worth celebrating.