Kevin Garvey is one of about 40 licensed gator trappers in Florida. "I need to experience this, just once," the construction worker said. After a lifetime in Florida, and never having killed a duck or deer for sport, Clay is preparing for his first gator hunt. Now, the state authorizes annual hunts.Īirboater Raymond Clay, 50, hopes to bag a gator. Once endangered as a species, laws protecting gators were so successful that their population bounced back in the '70s. That slow and steady increase about matches the slow and steady increase of Florida's human population."Ĭonservation laws also played a role. "Since 1970, we've seen a gradual but slow increase in the number of attacks. "Be aware that there are alligators in almost any fresh water in Florida," cautions Allan Woodward, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. This year so far, perhaps due to the three deaths, complaint calls have totaled 14,156, and 6,198 gators have been removed. The wildlife agency receives about 17,000 alligator complaints a year, and authorizes the removal of some 7,000 gators annually. "Admire the animal from a distance and leave it at that." "A lot of new residents are really unfamiliar with the dos and don'ts of coexisting with the alligator," he said. Keep small children and dogs away from the water's edge.Ī gator in the yard merits a call to the wildlife agency, but one simply cruising in a neighborhood lake is best left alone. Don't swim in fresh water during dusk or dawn, when gators are active. People, Ehrismann says, must use common sense: Don't feed the reptiles or they will associate humans with food. Wildlife officer Chris Ehrismann says alligators are an inescapable part of Florida's landscape. In one week in May, three women in Florida were killed by alligators. Gator encounters can be as amusing as a flummoxed suburbanite staring at a big lizard in the backyard pool, or as horror-show scary as children and dogs being yanked into the murk by the beast's unforgiving jaws. Some 18 million humans are steadily encroaching on their turf, experiencing more confrontations with the prehistoric creature whose bite can register more than 2,000 pounds of pressure. There are approximately 1.5 million gators in Florida. Or in cold-sweat clashes, like a diver's underwater battle with a hungry gator, or an accountant's tug-of-war with the reptile that snatched his puppy. Life along the fault line of swamp-turned-suburbia can be mapped out in the scars of the professionals who hunt or wrestle the scaly reptiles. Two species, upstart human and ancient alligator, share one habitat in a wary coexistence.
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