The Gator Glut

When the U.S. Interior Department put the American alligator on its list of endangered species in 1967, conservationists were delighted. But poachers kept on killing the "gators," which grow up to 12 ft. in length, and selling the skins for as much as $9 per ft. To end the incentive for slaughtering the beasts, the Federal Government finally cracked down last year on businesses dealing in the hides. That move has worked too well. With no enemies left, the alligators are proliferating wildly, especially in Louisiana. Indeed, says Luke Petrovich, a county public-safety commissioner, "we're up to our seats in alligators."

By far the most serious problem area is the southern part of the state, where new housing developments have been built along the marshy bayous where the alligators live. Last summer, for example, a family in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie went out to its swimming pool for an evening dip, but stopped short: a 4-ft. alligator was lolling in the water. Alligators have also been pulled, smoked or hosed out of culverts in Golden Meadow, Morgan City and other towns south of New Orleans.

Even New Orleans is infested. An eleven-man team of experts recently spent a month trying to rid the City Park's lagoons of gators that had already eaten all the park's ducks and were working their way through its fish and turtles. Panicked phone callers--as many as seven a week--report alligators in residential districts, even in the affluent sections bordering Bayou St.

John. Several dogs that wandered too close to the water's edge perished when what looked like a log suddenly thrashed into hungry action. The threat has become so great that golfers playing on the bayou-laced local links are advised not to look for balls lost in the water.

There is only one documented case of an alligator actually killing a person (last year in Florida). But the creatures have needle-sharp teeth, and the big ones can crunch a leg or arm off a grown man. Though the gator still tends to avoid people, warns Ted Joanen, a biologist with Louisiana's Wild Life and Fisheries Commission, "he domesticates quite easily and loses his fear of people.

You feed him once. Then there's always the chance he will turn on you."

Right now, Louisiana "relocates" captured alligators to wildlife management areas far from human settlements.

But even there the great reptiles reportedly are gobbling up such valuable fur-bearing animals as muskrat and nutria --not to mention possum, raccoon, frogs, fish and whatever else they can lay their jaws on. A better solution, state officials say, would be to reopen a limited hunting season on the gators. "We never agreed with the Federal Government that the alligator was an endangered species," says Joanen. "We have 1 million to 1.5 million of them here now. And the number is growing."

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