Reproductive strategies in animals are one of two things. One is they produce quantities of offspring of which few survive to reproduce and become food for other organisms or few offspring are produced with a high survival rate. Most reptiles including crocodilians adhere to the former strategy of producing lots of babies with low survival rates. It has been proven that you can harvest 50% of all eggs and babies in a wetland and it neither increases or decreases the population. Remember the mortality rate on wild baby gators is about 80%. Landowners are allowed to harvest a finite number of adult alligators, eggs, and babies in wetland areas based on population censuses conducted by the state alligator researchers. This encourages large landowners to NOT sell their land for development and gives them a way to offset the tax structure by income earned by harvest of wild alligators and eggs. Florida has set a high standard in terms of sustainable use of the wild alligator populations. There are many instances of things like this happening all over the world. In W. Africa for instance because the baby Ball Pythons are ranched by the local people in that they capture gravid females and wait for them to lay eggs to sell to us. After egglaying the lg females are carefully released in the same spot so that they can be caught next year. In years past ALL PYTHONS were killed for their skins upon discovery. In spite of the mass exports Ball Pythons are doing well because they bring income to the native people and are NOT killed. It is when you kill the adult breeders that the population drops in numbers. Most baby herps could be harvested with little or no impact on the population at large...FOOD FOR THOUGHT...I'VE BEEN PREACHING THIS FOR YEARS AND MOST DON'T GET IT.....
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Tom Crutchfield

www.tomcrutchfield.com

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