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Recommended citation for this article:  Thomas, Robert A.  2024.  Louisiana's bold plan to use scientific knowledge of the natural history of the American alligator, Alligator mississippiensis (Daudin, 1801), to save the species from possible extinction.  Occas. Pap.

Loyola Ctr. Enviro. Comm. (5 vers. 2.2): 1-14.

LOUISIANA’S BOLD PLAN TO USE SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE NATURAL

HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN ALLIGATOR, Alligator mississippiensis (Daudin 1801), TO SAVE THE SPECIES FROM POSSIBLE EXTINCTION.

By Robert A. Thomas, Loyola Center for Environmental Communication, Department of Strategic Communication, School of Communication & Design, Loyola University New Orleans, & Louisiana Master Naturalists of Greater New Orleans (rathomas@loyno.edu, 504-865-2107)

American alligators, Alligator mississippiensis (Daudin 1801), have long been important to Louisianans due to the value of their skins (belts, shoes, boots, luggage, the small chin scales for watch bands, etc.), as a component of our cultural cuisine (sauce piquante, gumbo, sausage, etc.), and, since the advent of nature-based tourism, as a magnet that draws visitors from around the world to Louisiana swamps. They have played a major role in the development of our culture: we wear them, we eat them, and we are fascinated by watching them.

Alligator and wetland tours are abundant in Louisiana. Here, the late and great “Alligator Annie” shows an alligator up close and personal to tourist who feel safe and comfortable in a boat.

The story that follows (concept published in Thomas, 1999, in PERC Reports) details how Louisiana biologists came to thoroughly understand the natural history of alligators and proposed a management policy founded entirely on their knowledge of “alligator science.”

Back in the 1960s and before, alligator populations were declining everywhere. As a budding herpetologist and avid naturalist, I spent an abundance of time moving around the state observing nature and I rarely encountered an alligator. Despite my efforts, they were not easily found.

Some of their depletion was due to habitat loss, but most was due to poaching and other forms of unmanaged slaughter. In 1962, alligator hunting was outlawed in Louisiana, and alligators were included on the list of protected species by the federal Endangered Species Act of 1967 (which predated the law we have now). But the slaughter continued. Virtually unknown to nature-lovers throughout the nation, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) was commencing a large-scale study of the natural history of the American alligator in order to make management decisions based on reliable data sets. Between 1974 and 1981, Louisiana biologists were successful in declassifying all state populations of alligators to the category of “threatened due to similarity of appearance” (meaning that their hides are easily confused with other imperiled species of crocodilians leading to customs officials have difficulty differentiating them).

Typically, the folks who owned and managed wetlands where alligators lived considered the reptiles a nuisance. Most of these folks made their living either trapping and fishing or leasing their land for these purposes as well as crawfishing, duck hunting, and related marsh uses. This is why owners viewed the alligator as competition for these resources. If they did not kill alligators themselves, they certainly did not attempt to prevent poachers from doing so. Why would they? The poachers were doing them a favor! Additionally, alligator poachers were dangerous. They were armed and knowingly breaking federal wildlife laws.

With protection, poaching did not totally disappear, but it decreased markedly. Alligator populations began to increase, especially in prime habitat. Analyses of studies by the LDWF, led by biologists Ted Joanen and Larry McNease at Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Cameron Parish, suggested that the alligator could sustain a harvest as a managed natural resource. Louisiana petitioned the U.S. government to allow an alligator harvest season in areas of high population density.

These changes were not readily accepted by everyone in Louisiana.        Other state departments were skeptical, and most environmental groups immediately opposed the concept, doubting that allowing a harvest season for what was considered an endangered species, while advocating that it would result in saving the species, was counter intuitive. There were many concerns voiced about enforcement of the regulations; Louisiana was known for its corruption in government and politics, including the lack of accountability when rules, regulations, and laws were broken. The media initially disagreed with the changes, and the public at large was doubtful.

Louisiana had its first, very localized (limited to Cameron Parish), legal alligator season in September 1972, much to the consternation of many animal rights advocates and environmental groups. LDWF maintained that, if managed properly, alligator populations would strengthen, their harvest would contribute to the economy, and landowners would become strong advocates for their protection. People who opposed the program still thought that it would be abused, would encourage a year-round black-market trade, and would lead to their extinction.

There were many protestors in the early days of the harvests. Their concerns were sincere and based on a long history of mistrust for government enforcement.

Photographer unknown.

In the first years, harvesters (we'll call them harvesters since they are mostly simply running baited lines or collecting eggs from nests) could not sell the alligator meat, though they could eat their own kills. In typical Louisiana fashion, people from near and far visited Cameron Parish with bags of groceries to trade with local harvester for meat – legally!

With early indications of success, Vermilion Parish was added in 1973, Calcasieu Parish in 1975, coastwide in 1979, then statewide in 1981. After 1979, the harvest spread to other states.

Before discussing the management plan, it should be understood that alligator populations have expanded and prospered since the 1970s. Many ask how they could do so well since being protected by a sound management system. The answer lies in the reproductive potential of alligators. Joanen and McNease believed that actively reproductive female alligators represent about 5% of the population, year in and year out. The number of eggs laid per female ranges 20-90 or so, thus each nesting season there are more eggs in nests than the total number of alligators in the wild. If one can ensure nesting success, the population is virtually guaranteed to grow.

Interesting free market statistics existed. According to Joanen and McNease, the 1970 Louisiana alligator population was censused at 172,080. By 1993, the number had increased to 992,314, taking a slight dip from the preceding year’s 1,149,983. This increase occurred during a period of managed harvest. Interestingly, in 1970, 61% of the alligators in marshes were on private property. There were no hard data for non-marsh habitats. During the next 20 years, public ownership of alligator habitat expanded in the state (e.g., the development of Jean Lafitte National Historic Park & Preserve and the expansion of Louisiana Wildlife Management Areas and what has become the Southeast Louisiana National Wildlife Refuge Complex), the alligator population grew by over 400%, and the population in private marshes had grown to 75%.

What does "managed properly" mean? LDWF set forth a management plan that was based on scientific knowledge of the species' natural history. The following steps were mandated:

1. The public season was recommended by LDWF biologists and the Alligator Advisory Council before approval by its Commission. The original harvest season was restricted to September each year. During late summer and throughout September, females are typically on nests that are normally confined to marsh areas, so the “egg layers” are more sedentary at this time as they guard their nests in rather remote areas.

Typical alligator nest made of vegetation. The female is somewhere close guarding the eggs from possible predation. Photographer unknown.

Today there are a couple of changes based on better understanding of alligator population dynamics and the economic drivers in place. First, Louisiana now has two alligator season zones in their plan. The east zone harvest opens on the last

Wednesday of August and the west zone opens on the first Wednesday of September. This was driven by processors being overwhelmed when the entire state opened at one time. Second, the season is now open during September and October. This is allowed due to today’s huge increases in alligator numbers, and it was driven by and allows alligator hunting guides extra time to take clients out to select and shoot large alligators).

2. In the beginning, the management plan focused on alligators being caught on hook and line, and this remains the standard for wild caught alligators. When a hooked alligator is pulled to the surface, it is dispatched with a gun shot.

These harvesters are in an open marsh using a pole they inserted into the soil on which they are attaching their lines with hooks. If there was woody vegetation their lines would be tied to limbs and trunks. Photo by C. C. Lockwood.

A hooked alligator is lifted to the surface and dispatched with a bullet. Photographer unknown.

It was thought that free shooting alligators with a rifle was not allowed. We now know it was never against the law to use a rifle, but its use was restricted to day hunting. Professional guides can take hunters on day hunting trips, which also contributes to the economy and, since those hunters typically want “trophy” alligators, the largest alligators are males – not the egg layers.

A key component of this management program is the requirement for randomness in the harvest. Previously, poachers using rifles would move from alligator to alligator and choose the age class and size that would give them maximum money for the illegal skins. This resulted in many reproductive females, often guarding their nests, being removed from the population. "Poling," the practice of using a long pole with a hook on the end to snag an alligator under water, was outlawed since it is not random and gave the hunter an advantage. That said, this technique and the use of large treble hooks to capture wounded or disabled alligators is permitted.

3. Bait can legally be set anywhere, but by far the easiest and most used location for the harvester is in canals and channels. During September, most female alligators are out in the marsh and most alligators in canals and channels are male. If most harvesting is in canals, it follows that most alligators taken will be male. In fact, annual analysis by LDWF shows that there has been a consistent 70% male:30% female harvest ratio. Since one male can service many females, this ensures that the egg producers are protected, and enough males would always be left to take care of the ladies.
4. Hunters are advised to hang their bait high enough over the water so that only larger alligators can reach it. There is no fast rule-of-thumb, but some of my colleagues hang their hooks at 8" above the water and they have never caught an alligator of less than 4 ft long. When they hang at 18", they get gators about 10 ft and up. The height above the water becomes critical when harvesting is done in tidal zones where the tide may come in and submerge the bait, allowing it to be eaten by small gators and catfish!

5. Harvesters must either own or lease the property where they set their lines. This controls who is where, and it ensures that private landowners will reap some benefits from the hunting season.
6. Each year, LDWF censuses alligator populations parish-by-parish (in Louisiana, “parish” is the term used for “county”), and the annual census data are added to a 5-year running average used to determine how many alligators (expressed as alligators-per-acre-of-swamp/marsh) can be taken in each parish depending on how many acres each harvester controls. If population census estimates are low, then they set the harvest low; if high, they set it high. They can, of course, close the season, overall or locally, if their data suggest they should.

7. On the basis of the area a harvester owns/leases and the local alligator population size, each licensed harvester is issued a certain number of tags, each with an identifying number. Each of these tags represents one alligator that they can harvest. If the harvester loses a tag, that is one less alligator that can be harvested.

Alligator tag properly install upon capture.

Alligator harvester placing a legal tag on a freshly caught alligator in Tangipahoa Parish in September 1983.

8. In the early years, all caught alligators had to be skinned – skins were salted, rolled, and sold to brokers.

Skinners paying attention to pattern details discussed next.

In order to prevent poachers from using old non-random techniques to select prime stock throughout the year and then using their legal tags on them at the opening of the season, LDWF originally issued a unique cutting pattern around certain scales on the side of the head and elsewhere on the body. This pattern would be released when harvesters picked up their tags and would allow skin buyers and enforcement agents to examine a skin and easily identify the year in which it was harvested. Due to the large populations of alligators today, and the fact that most harvesters now sell their whole alligators to brokers for processing, these patterns for skinning are no longer used. Will it allow illegal harvesting?

Only good enforcement can control the regulations.

Skinning pattern required in 1980, typos and all! Hunters had to use this pattern

when skinning their alligators that year.

Required pattern cut in 1988.

These regulations were based on Joanen and McNease’s scientific studies, and as mentioned throughout this article, as the harvest became successful, reevaluations of the management plan resulted in changes in the operational regulations.

All of this adds up to a professional management plan based on the scientific knowledge of the natural history of the species, annual population estimates, controlling who harvests where, and giving a source of revenue to property owners. This system works well in theory, but does it in practice? I have been on several trips to observe the harvest of alligators. On these trips, I have witnessed the following:

1. LDWF personnel have met us near our lease and indicated, before they could even see us, that they knew who should be in the boat, i.e., had registered tags, and the number of alligators we already had on lines.
2. The 30 or so alligators harvested on my trips were all males.
3. Alligator sizes have ranged from 4-13 feet.
4. In one instance, a 10-foot alligator that had a tag affixed to its tail thrashed about in the boat as we drove down the interstate highway (drawing wild looks and gesticulations from passers-by) heading home and lost its tag. LDWF personnel required us to place a new tag on the skin, thus reducing our harvest by one.
5. I have seen plenty of alligators in the harvest area each of the following springs.

Alligator team during a harvest.

In addition to the annual harvest, there are two other sources of alligator skins and meat developed by LDWF over the years.

1. Alligator farming: From the very beginning of the harvest program in 1972, an important element of the plan was to license alligator farms. The idea was that one way to grow the population and make it an important economic factor was to not only raise alligators as “farm animals,” but to actually breed them in captivity, hatch the eggs, raise the hatchlings to a marketable size, then process them.

Called the Rockefeller Supplement Program, the LDWF licensed alligator farmers for 10 years and supplied them with hatchling alligators. There was success, but it was not as efficient as planned. Farms produced a total of 1449 skins in 1983, and by the early 1990s there were over 130 alligator farms in Louisiana, resulting in huge increases in numbers of skins produced, with landowners/farmers making nice profits.

Alligator farm (from internet). Many professional sites today are well designed and humane in their operation. Photograph from the internet.

2. Alligator ranching: A plan was needed to expand the numbers of alligators raised in captivity. Alligator ranching was designed and implemented in 1986 to allow the harvest of eggs directly from nests. This was a source of great concern for those who dreamed of a recovered species. How in the world can we allow taking all the eggs from wild nests and not exterminate the species? Once again, Joanen and McNease used their knowledge of alligator natural history to solve the problem. They had researched such topics as survival statistics on numbers of eggs in nests, their hatching rates, and survival in nature to certain sizes. At the time of the plan, their data suggested that under wild conditions 17% of the eggs in a nest would hatch, grow, and survive to 4 feet in length. That is, normally only 17% of natural populations reach this size in the wild with the rest being devoured by non-human diners, especially snakes, birds, mammals such as otters, and larger alligators. At this length, there are few predators. Most predation takes place on the younger individuals, but it was understood that large alligators can easily consume 4- foot conspecifics. The plan used scientific information to emulate Mother Nature!

Thus, the plan allowed harvesting of all eggs in nests, and required that they be incubated, hatched, and the young raised in farms with all siblings from a nest being raised together. Records had to be retained of exactly where the original nest was

located, with preference being to return the siblings for release at or near the original nest. If they were dumped into open water, large territorial alligators will definitely gobble them up.

Ranching of eggs is often done using helicopters, with one person who collects the eggs from the nest and another who uses a long pole to keep the female from attacking the harvester!

Helicopters with pontoons can easily move from nest to nest in the marsh.

When collected, each eggs receives a mark on the upper surface as it lays in the nest. Alligator embryos attach to the top of the egg and if turned during collection they die.

Alligator eggs just removed from one nest.

Ranching greatly rewarded landowners and farmers alike. As an example, in 2018 the state alligator egg harvest was a record 640,000 eggs – each egg bringing $10-50 each or more!

In keeping with allowing scientific studies to guide regulation, refinements have now dropped the 4-foot return percentage to 5%.

In farms that obtain their eggs from nests, they must keep track of nest siblings. All in this photo are from the same nest so 5% will be returned to the nest site.

This plan was not without dissent and controversy from the scientific community. The late esteemed wetland ecologist Dr. Robert Chabreck, Louisiana State University, published that data from a brief, geographically confined study suggested that most of the released alligators are immediately eaten by adults. There was strong disagreement of his assertion from LDWF and this topic and their research now confirms the validity of their regulations that base management decisions on scientific data.

The system seems to be working. Alligator populations are very healthy throughout the Gulf Coast in their prime habitats. The only negative is that larger alligators tend to be more

easily harvested, so one generally tends to see many alligators, but fewer 10 ft plus animals. No one has demonstrated any ecological ramifications of this change in size structure of the population, nor any issues resulting from removal of 95% of the alligator juveniles via ranching.

When one can demonstrate that a once threatened species has experienced population growth and stabilization through application of a professional management plan that is based on a well-researched scientific body of knowledge, coupled with citizens growing the economy and property owners realizing value from their holdings, then we have a strong example of environmental success deriving from the application of free market concepts. It is understood that this system works due to the values from harvesting specimens, and that we must strive to explore ways to identify values of non-commercial species.

Now that the American alligator issue is behind us, let’s tackle even more difficult issues. But remember, we must continue to monitor alligator populations, harvests, regulations, and such to ensure that the management policy/plan remains in regulatory balance!

Acknowledgments: The genesis of this entire management plan was made possible by the focused alligator natural history research coupled with associated conservation management development performed during the careers of Ted Joanen and Larry McNease at the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Grand Chenier, Louisiana. Thanks to many staff and biologists of LDWF for help and guidance, especially to the visionary supervisory staff Jeb Linscombe and Ruth Elsey, and retired state herpetologist Jeff Boundy. I appreciate the expertise shared with me by Gary Uhl and Tommy Haden. C. C. Lockwood donated the use of one of his photos and Aimée K. Thomas did final edits.

REFERENCES

Joanen, Ted and Larry McNease. 1981. Management of the alligator as a renewable resource in Louisiana. Georgia Dept. Nat. Res. Tech. Bull. 5: 62-72.

         and         . 1987a. The management of alligators in Louisiana, USA, pp. 33-

42. In: G. J. W. Webb, S. C. Manolis, and P. J. Whitehead (eds.). Wildlife Management: Crocodiles and Alligators. Surrey, Beatty and Sons. Chipping Norton, New South Wales, Australia.

         and         . 1987b. Alligator farming research in Louisiana, USA, pp. 329-

40. In: G. J. W. Webb, S. C. Manolis, and P. J. Whitehead (eds.). Wildlife Management: Crocodiles and Alligators. Surrey, Beauty and Sons. Chipping Norton, New South Wales, Australia.

                ,         , Ruth M. Elsey, and Mark A. Staton. 1997. The commercial consumptive use of the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) in Louisiana. Its effects on conservation, pp. 465-506. In: C. Freese (ed.). Harvesting Wild Species.

Implications for Biodiversity. The John Hopkins Univ. Press.

McIlhenny, Edward Avery. 1935. The Alligator's Life History. Christopher Publ. House, Boston (reprinted by Soc. Study Amphibians Reptiles). 117 pp.

Ouchley, Kelby. 2013. American alligator. Ancient predator in the modern world. Univ. Press of Florida, Gainesville. 138 pp.

Thomas, Robert A. 1999. Managed hunting protects a species: Harvesting alligators. PERC Reports 17(4): 12-14.

FOR MORE STORIES ON NATURE IN COASTAL LOUISIANA:

NATURE NOTES – A PERIODIC TREATISE ON NATURAL HISTORY TOPICS

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You may also subscribe (free) to our podcast, The Southern Naturalist (SoNat), which you can hear on many podcast sites, especially Apple Podcast and Spotify. It is hosted by Dr. Aimée K. Thomas (my biologist daughter, also a professor at Loyola University New Orleans) and me.

Produced by Emma Reid and several Loyola students. Google for its many related sites.

Want to learn more about the natural history of southeast Louisiana. Visit the website of the Louisiana Master Naturalists of Greater New Orleans and consider registering for a fall or spring workshop series to become a Certified Louisiana Master Naturalist (https://louisianamasternaturalistsgno.org/). It is a gathering place for like-minded nature enthusiasts!

TO SEE ALL OCCASIONAL PAPERS IN THIS SERIES:

https://lucec.loyno.edu/publications-media/lucec-publications/occasional-publications-lucec

Aimée Thomas, Shannon Fortenberry, and I also host the website Tropical Natural History

(https://tropicalnaturalhistory.org/) if you are interest in the flora, fauna, and funga of the tropics.

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