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Are gators nuisance or beauty? It's in the eye of the beholder

By EMILY NIPPS
Published January 12, 2007

HUNTERS GREEN - Coming from Arizona and Wisconsin, Kathy Linehan found native alligators to be a new sight when she moved to Hunter's Green three years ago.

She would walk her dog through her Hunter's Green neighborhood and spy on some fat ones sunning themselves in a nearby pond. There were mothers watching over their babies and huge, scaly 7-footers crawling in and out of the water.

"To me, it's a beautiful sight," Linehan said.

But according to Linehan, that landscape changed drastically after one day last spring when she saw two men in high boots and rugged clothing wading through the pond near her house on Tantallon Circle. They drove a beat up pickup truck and appeared to be hunting.

"And then they were gone," she said. "I never saw another alligator in that pond again. I'd like to know what happened to them." She feared perhaps they were killed and sold for their meat and hides.

Linehan said she wrote a letter to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission a couple of months ago but never got a reply. No one at the Hunter's Green Community Association could address that specific incident last spring, either.

However, representatives from both organizations could offer theories on what might have happened to the gators. The short explanation: Those men probably were trappers, and they must have had a license to be there. And yes, most likely, some alligators were killed and sold for their meat and hides.

It might sound inhumane to some, said Gary Morse of the wildlife commission's southwest regional office, but it's the preferred way to deal with nuisance alligators "for biological reasons and safety reasons."

"Simply relocating them is generally a feel-good proposition that's actually detrimental to the gator population," he said. "When an alligator moves into another habitat, you're putting them in a situation where another gator has to be killed or displaced among that population."

Trappers are licensed and contracted through the wildlife commission, and when homeowners believe there is an alligator in the neighborhood that has become too comfortable or dangerous around humans, they must call the commission. The agency then issues a permit based on the complaint, usually limiting the number and size of gators that can be trapped.

Gators over 4 feet are typically destroyed, Morse said, though there are still limits. Babies and eggs are typically left alone. The trappers are trained to identify which alligators are the most troubling and which are not. More often than not, the nuisance gator reveals itself by showing that it's not afraid of the trappers or other humans.

That doesn't quite explain how the pond near Linehan's home went from many gators to zero even the "Beware of Alligators" signs were taken down, she said, but Hunter's Green Community Association president Ann Johnson offered a guess. There are 34 man-made lakes or ponds in Hunter's Green, some of which are connected. It's not unusual for groups of alligators to move from one pond to another, especially during mating seasons.

Johnson said it is up to residents, not the association, to report nuisance gators.

The trappers are under the direction of the commission.

"We don't know what happens once the trapper comes in," she said.

Emily Nipps can be reached at (813) 269-5313 or nipps@sptimes.com.

[Last modified January 11, 2007, 22:45:16]