Alabama hunters are killing huge gators off the Gulf Coast. Is that a good thing?
Scott
Evans (left), Jeff Gregg (center), and Justin Gregg (right) after their
big catch on Lake Eufaula in Alabama on Aug. 14, 2015. Jeff Gregg said
that catching the 920-pound, 13’6″-long alligator was a dream. (Family
photo)
He was a whopper.
It took six men to pull
a 13-foot, 9-inch alligator from Lake Eufaula in Alabama. The animal
weighed in at 920 pounds at a local lumber yard in mid-August, but its
girth is only now raising eyebrows and drawing gasps; it was weighed
last week but started to draw national attention Tuesday.
The
giant male gator is one of several monsters that were hauled out of
waters during regulated hunts in Alabama, Texas and Florida in recent
years, and some biologists question whether that’s a good thing. Big
dominant males manage the habitat where they reside, keeping smaller,
more aggressive males away.
“You
move one animal and four or five or six smaller gators come in and fight
for territory,” said Kent Vliet, an alligator biologist at the
University of Florida. “It is a bit destabilizing in that sense.”
Vliet said alligator hunters should be encouraged to snag younger males to manage populations and leave the behemoths alone.
“In
my mind, because so few alligators that hatch reach adult size, and
even fewer reach full bull status, I think of those animals as being
very valuable,” said Vliet, coordinator of the university’s laboratory
in the biology department. “A lot of ecological resources have gone into
making that animal. To me that’s sort of a waste.”
Humans don’t hunt that way.
[New study shows just what vicious predators humans really are]
They
want the big game, the big trophy, a place in the record books. Scott
Evans, of Center Point, and his friends, brothers Jeff and Justin Gregg,
achieved that in some regard, capturing the biggest gator ever in that
particular lake.
But as gators go, this beast was no state or
national record. The largest alligator ever caught in the wild was a
15-foot, 9-inch giant wrangled last year in a tributary to the Alabama
River.
More than likely, the world record 1,011-pound male
would have dominated the more recent catch in Lake Eufaula. He probably
wouldn’t have allowed him in his territory, and in the unlikely event
that he did, he definitely wouldn’t have allowed him to approach females
during the April to May breeding season, Vliet said.
An
alligator is seen in the water as Secretary of the Interior Sally
Jewell visits the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife
Refuge in the Everglades. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The
second largest catch, a 14-foot, 8-inch gator roped and drowned by
Thomas Bass of Trinity, Tex., held the record until Mandy Stokes and a
group of helpers made news with their catch last year. Bass caught his
gator eight years ago, but wasn’t entered into the record kept by Safari
Club International until last year.
Robert “Tres” Ammerman, a
licensed practical nurse from Apopka, caught a skinny 14-foot, 3-inch
male that weighed 654 pounds, in Lake Washington in 2010. It was the
longest documented gator caught in Florida, according to the state Fish
and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Florida
is renowned for alligators, which serve as the mascot for the state’s
largest university, but the animals range the entire length of the Gulf
Coast. They are also found in the Carolinas.
The American
alligator is classified as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, a listing that provides federal protection, But state approved
management and control efforts are allowed under the designation.
Louisiana
and Florida have the largest habitats, but the populations are rapidly
growing in Alabama, Mississippi and Texas, Vliet said. With smaller
habitats in the latter three states, population management programs were
slower to start.
[Frog, toad and amphibian populations are plummeting]
“Because they delayed the annual harvest for so long, they’ve had some very big animals,” Vliet said.
Removing
them makes headlines, but the news is not always good, especially when
no human has been harmed. “These are unusual animals. They have survived
a long time. They tend to be wary animals. They may be older animals.
It is likely that they do dominate an area, subordinate smaller males,
mate with multiple females,” Vliet said.
“In
a lot of ways they control the alligator population in that area.
There’s no doubt in my mind that when you move an animal of this size,
it has an impact on the population.”
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Darryl
Fears has worked at The Washington Post for more than a decade, mostly
as a reporter on the National staff. He currently covers the environment, focusing on the Chesapeake Bay and issues affecting wildlife.
Link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/08/25/hunters-are-killing-huge-gators-on-the-gulf-coast-is-that-a-good-thing/
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