NEWS-JOURNAL (Daytona Beach, Florida) 16 April 05 Biting Back - Spring means business for gator trappers (Dinah Voyles Pulver)
It's a rite of spring. Birds nest. Wildflowers bloom on roadsides. And Florida's most famous reptiles start crawling around, looking for food and staking out territory for the mating season that begins in a few weeks.
But if one of those big alligators starts lounging around in your back yard and doesn't seem afraid of people, what do you do? Pick up the phone and call the state's new toll-free nuisance alligator hot line (866) FWC-GATOR, or (866) 392-4287.
The call would join more than 17,000 calls received by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission each year. And with every fatal alligator attack, that number grows as residents on lakes, canals and golf courses worry about their children, pets and even their own safety.
The calls are answered by staff in the wildlife commission's nuisance alligator program, which was recently moved from the various regional law enforcement offices to a single wildlife management office in Okeechobee.
Commission officials say the new 24-hour hot line will make it easier to route all the calls to one place and will be easier for people to remember.
The commission considers each complaint based on the alligator's size and location and decides whether it's a threat, said Lindsey Hord, a wildlife biologist and statewide coordinator for the program.
Particularly, they look at whether it's somewhere alligators are supposed to be, Hord said. "If it's in the city, somewhere people live, we're more liberal when it comes to deciding to remove it."
If the alligator is more than 4 feet long and is deemed a threat, the commission calls one of its 40 licensed trappers and gives the OK for the reptile to be removed and slaughtered.
"We have lots of alligators. There's no biological justification to protect an individual alligator, particularly if it's some risk to people or property," Hord said. "It's a significant concern of the commission to protect human life and lower the risk of attacks by alligators on people."
For the most part, the alligator populations around the state are either stable or increasing, he said. At one time endangered, the reptiles are now managed by the state as a species of special concern. It is illegal for anyone to catch, harm or harass the animals except for those who receive permits to hunt them during the annual fall season and the state-licensed nuisance alligator trappers.
In Volusia and Flagler counties, the commission has two licensed gator trappers, Curtis Lucas and Jerry Flynn.
"We're extremely busy," Flynn said this week. Last year he captured and killed more than 300 alligators.
On Monday, he and an assistant navigated a stack of complaints and a route that took them from Deltona and DeBary to Longwood and Oviedo in search of alligators that had been deemed a nuisance. Most often, the stops were at homes on lakes or golf course ponds.
The commission received more nuisance calls than ever before in 2003 -- 17,161 -- according to statistics provided by Steve Stiegler, a biologist with the commission's alligator management program in Tallahassee. Because of a computer glitch and the administrative change, the 2004 numbers aren't yet available.
The number of alligators taken in 2003 -- 6,759 -- was not the highest-ever. That was in 2001, when the commission received 16,749 complaints and 7,279 alligators were removed.
The alligators often prove elusive.
When they do catch a gator, the trappers are allowed to sell the hides and meat. State officials say the overall value of those products in 2003 was about $1.07 million.
One of the reasons that gators often wind up being removed, Flynn said, is because they've been fed, a practice that is both "illegal and stupid."
Hord said alligators are "very, very quick to become unwary of people and learn to go to food."
"It's impossible, as far as I know, to undo that fear," Hord said. "Once they learn that people and food are linked, then they are a problem."
But, in most recent alligator attacks, feeding was not the reason people were attacked, he said.
They are, after all, predators that see people who wander into their territory as prey.
Spring means business for gator trappers