MOBILE REGISTER (Alabama) 23 July 05 Wanted: Live Alligators - Current control officer says it's not so easy to take the big reptiles alive (Ryan Dezember)
Summerdale: Alligator Alley, a south Baldwin County tourist attraction that also serves as a sort of sanctuary for reptiles that have been declared nuisances in Florida, boasts 156 toothy inhabitants. None of them come from the nearby swamps of Gulf Shores or the Mobile-Tensaw Delta or anywhere else in Alabama.
The park's proprietor, Wesley Moore, wants that to change and is pushing for the repeal of a state law that bans alligator farm owners and exhibitors from being control agents so he can make a run at a longtime state contractor's job and collect nuisance gators himself.
Moore made his wishes public after the current control agent, Gary Casper, killed a well-known reptile at the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge last month when state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources officials discovered that tourists had been feeding the 11-footer, encouraging it to become brazen toward humans.
"That alligator didn't have to be killed," Moore said. "There is an alternative."
Though Casper said he received permission just this week from Conservation Department officials to sell any future captures to Alligator Alley, Moore said he doubts he'll get many local animals.
"If he's not willing to do it," Moore said, "it's time for him to step down,"
For his part, Casper said, the gig is full-time, and taking gators alive is rarely a simple task.
"You don't go out there and just put a choke stick on a gator and bring him to your farm," he said. "It's not that easy."
On a recent morning, Moore and a group of volunteers and employees eagerly awaited the arrival of Alligator Alley's newest acquisition: a 12-foot-long, 500-pounder. It had been spending too much time at a Lake Seminole marina in northern Florida and had been declared a danger.
The alligator arrived, eyes covered by duct tape and muzzle roped shut, in a makeshift trailer fashioned from the wall panels of a walk-in cooler.
Tony Hunter, Florida's Tallahassee-based nuisance control hunter, was delivering the creature to the Summerdale site, as he had done 155 times before. Moore said he expects three more animals to come via Hunter this weekend.
State regulations that guide nuisance control hunters run over seven pages and detail situations in which alligators should be killed and when they should be relocated. The rules also outline procedures for cataloging the catches and the resulting meat and hides.
Selling off an alligator's body parts is how state contractors in Alabama and Florida make their money.
Hunter, the panhandle trapper, said he's currently getting about $5 a pound for meat wholesale and $7 a pound when he offers it straight to consumers via his Web site.
Skins, which a 2004 Florida study found fluctuate far more than meat prices, are selling this year for between $30 and $35 per linear foot, Hunter said. On his Web site, Hunter also sells bleached skulls -- $15 an inch for craniums larger than 15 inches, or $10 an inch for smaller skulls -- and claws, which are $20 for an assortment of 10.
Hunter said he'll collect up to 200 alligators over the summer in the four counties he covers for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and has no problem selling the byproducts.
"There's a huge market for it," Hunter, a former real estate agent, said.
Casper, who's had an Alabama contract for 13 years, won't say exactly how many gators he collects each year in his exclusive territory, which includes Mobile and Baldwin counties and extends north to Montgomery, but said it's a lot. At the moment, he's behind by 20 calls, he said.
A 2001 Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission study of that state's nuisance control program found that a trapper's average operating costs in 1995 were $222 per alligator and with hide and meat prices at about today's levels, the typical reptile would bring in $362 for a $162 profit.
With fuel prices well above what they were 10 years ago, it's safe to assume that trapper expenses are more now -- particularly for one with as expansive a territory as Casper.
Moore said he pays Hunter market price to bring live animals to Summerdale, as little as $100 for a 4-foot gator and more than $1,000 for big ones, like the most recent acquisition. He offers Casper the same.
As he was preparing to release the Lake Seminole animal into Alligator Alley's cypress swamp, Hunter said that taking a gator alive versus a prompt killing means "probably a difference of about 30 minutes."
"It's a little more aggravating, but not by a huge amount," he said.
Casper said that whether he nabs an alligator alive or shoots it and hauls it to Louisiana for processing depends on where the reptile is. If it's roadside, in good health and easy to grab, he said he'd be glad to drive to Summerdale instead of Louisiana.
Allan Andress, chief enforcement officer for the Alabama Conservation Department, said the recipients of Casper's catches are the hunter's choice, so long as they are licensed to handle either live gators, as Moore is, or their byproducts.
"We don't get involved in his selection of who he sells his gators to as long as it's legal," Andress said.
There are no "immediate plans to make any changes" in alligator control duties in southern Alabama, Andress said, and he's heard no suggestions to do so from the district officials based in Spanish Fort who make such recommendations.
But Andress said he wouldn't rule out adding a second control trapper to join Casper if there were benefits to doing so.
"Just because he's the only one doesn't mean that wouldn't change," Andress said.
Moore said he's contacted officials in Montgomery about lifting the law banning him from control duties -- intended to discourage unnecessary captures or kills -- but has had no luck.
Alligator Alley, which opened last summer, is a 20-acre, manmade and spring-fed swamp on a 160-acre farm about a quarter mile east of Alabama 59 that Moore's grandfather bought in 1940.
The grandfather dug a channel around the spring to irrigate nearby vegetable fields but beavers began damming it, causing water from heavy spring rains to flood the fields and ruin crops. One day a friend brought over a foot-long alligator in a shoe box and told Moore's grandfather to put it in the swamp, feed it plenty of chicken and eventually the beaver problem would be resolved.
That worked, but the alligator grew to 13 feet long and had to be killed when it began going after the grandchildren, Moore said.
"I'm the only place that wants nuisance alligators," Moore said after guiding a pack of tourists through a recent afternoon feeding. "This is alligator heaven. These guys have got it good: three squares a day, enough girls to go around."
Wanted: Live Alligators - Current control officer says it's not so easy to take the big reptiles ali