DAILY COMET (Thibodaux, Louisiana) 20 June 04 Louisiana may protect alligator snappers
(AP): Things may be about to change for the world's largest freshwater turtles, alligator snapping turtles.
For years, Louisiana has been the only state in their range where it was legal to catch and kill the reptiles, which can live for more than half a century and grow to more than 150 pounds.
There were still plenty, Louisiana's state biologists said, though the other 12 states where the turtles live all protected them.
But after decades of habitat loss and turtle soup - and with fewer trappers bothering to try for those that are left - turtle trappers say alligator snapping turtles are hard to get.
An advisory panel of scientists, reptile dealers and government officials will meet Tuesday in Baton Rouge to consider making it illegal to buy or sell alligator snapping turtles.
People could still take as many as four a day for their own use.
The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries could put the rule into effect as soon as September.
Turtle trapper Sherman Simoneaux of Montz and other bayou regulars say the rule would have little effect on them, because they hardly ever catch alligator snappers anyway.
These days, they say, the money is in more abundant species such as soft-shelled turtles and the alligator snapper's smaller cousin, the common snapping turtle.
"It isn't like we're going to starve if we couldn't catch them," as long as the other turtles remain legal, Simoneaux said.
The Endangered Species Act put alligator snappers into turtle soup.
It was originally made with sea turtles. But when the act became law in the early 1970s, it became illegal to catch sea turtles for their meat.
Mock turtle soup went on menus around New Orleans, using pork or alligator meat.
When the giant freshwater turtles went into the pot, the result could once again be called turtle instead of mock turtle soup.
Alligator snappers spend most of their time in the muck at the bottom of ponds and slow streams, surfacing only to breathe, breed and get a bite to eat.
Jeff Boundy, a state Wildlife and Fisheries herpetologist who spent five years counting alligator snappers in Louisiana, said 545 were caught, and they came from all over the state.
He said that proves they remain wide-ranging, but it's impossible to say whether the population is shrinking, growing or holding steady is impossible to say.
"That may be a 10 percent difference or a 90 percent difference from what they might have caught in the past," he said. "It's impossible to tell what's under the surface of the water."
Critics such as Cliff Fontenot, a biologist at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, argue that Boundy's study was not extensive enough to warrant solid evidence of abundant alligator snapping turtles.
The University of Florida's Peter Pritchard, a leading authority on the reptile, said its slow reproduction rate simply cannot keep pace with trapping pressures, even if only occasional specimens continue to be caught.
Hayden Reno, a former turtle trapper from Manchac, at the western edge of Lake Pontchartrain, said they have definitely gotten scarce in the Manchac swamps.
Reno, 47, grew up taking trips into the swamps with his uncles to search out the turtle's winter nesting holes.
"We'd take a long pole, 14, 16 feet long, with a hook on the end, and poke around in the hole," Reno recalled. "You'd hit soft mud, leaves and then - bump! - hit the shell of a turtle. You'd hook them in the mouth or in the shell and pull them out. We'd pull out eight or 10 from one hole. A guy could go out and make $400, $500 a day on turtles. It was like a gold rush."
Reno's family runs a seafood business, and his father had a turtle meat contract with the Campbell Soup Company. During the turtle industry's heyday, turtles were caught by the boatload from the swamps surrounding Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas. More came in by truck from out of state, to be packed onto boxcars and shipped across the country for consumption. By the late 1970s, the local supply dried up, and the trucks from elsewhere had stopped.
Last week, the Reno family seafood store had only one alligator snapper on hand, brought in by a Hammond man who caught it while fishing.
"I can't say what's around the state, but I can say what's around here: We don't have any turtles," Reno said.
Boundy said an accurate gauge of the turtle's population will come only if the state repeats its initial survey. That would show if particular stream systems are producing more or fewer turtles.
One turtle trapper from LaPlace, Ben Naquin, is trying to establish a conservation foundation that would propagate young turtles and release them into the wild.
Louisiana may protect alligator snappers