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Egg Hunt Aids Gator Farms

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The Associated Press

Published: July 19, 2008

IN THE EVERGLADES - It's 7 a.m. in the marsh, and like some sort of cigar-chomping swamp cowboy, biologist Lindsey Hord is about to reach for something that could cost him a few fingers - or worse - if he's not careful.

It's the first day of Florida's annual alligator egg collection program, a yearly ritual to replenish stocks for the state's gator farmers.
Hord and several other airboat pilots fire up their engines and slowly glide out into a canal, voices crackling over their radios.
Hord roars up to a small island and peers into the brush for a nest that to the untrained eye looks like just a patch of wet dirt.

Bingo.

He kneels beside the mound, carefully pulling apart the mulch-like mass of dark, damp weeds. Over his shoulder, just a few feet away, mama alligator's bulbous eyes float ominously on the water's surface. She's watching, but keeping her distance.
Hord gently pulls the eggs from the dirt and swipes a line on the tops with a black marker before placing them carefully in a plastic bin lined with muck to keep them warm.

"If they're not marked and we roll them over, it'll kill the embryo," Hord says.

To some, this might seem, well, crazy. For Hord, who helps coordinate alligator management in a state with more than a million of the prehistoric, toothy reptiles, it's another day at the office.

"You always have to watch your back," Hord says. "Usually, they will hiss and snap and make all kinds of noise, but I've had them just literally sneak up on me."

Each summer, scientists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission help collect up to 40,000 eggs for 30 farmers.

Each farmer gets roughly 1,000 eggs for about $12 a pop, money that pays for the hunt and funds future alligator management programs.

By day's end, the crews collect more than a thousand eggs. Not a bad start to the roughly 20-day season.

Biologists say the egg collections don't harm the alligator population because a typical female lays about 35 eggs, the reptiles can reproduce for 25 years and they need only a few viable babies apiece to keep their numbers healthy.

Experts say the collections can help because the more alligators there are, the lower the survival rate for the young.

Since the collections began in 1988, roughly 600,000 eggs have been gathered and distributed to farmers, who can make up to $100,000 a year by selling the hides (flawless ones go for about $240) and meat, which can fetch about $12 a pound retail or $6 wholesale.

Each alligator produces up to seven pounds of meat, most of which is sold in the United States, while the hides go to European tanneries.

Allen Register owns Gatorama near Palmdale in the heart of the Glades, an old Florida roadside tourist attraction and alligator farm. He's also the statewide coordinator for the collection program.

He has some 3,000 gators on his farm and slaughters about 1,000 a year. The stress of captivity keeps female alligators from laying enough eggs to sustain a farm, so the collections are needed to keep the business going.

Back in the marsh, Hord is on his knees, surrounded by a forest of towering sawgrass. "It's not looking good," he says, digging through yet another potential nest. "We may have an empty one here."

Squinting his eyes, Hord brushes away the dirt to reveal a layer of soft-shell turtle eggs that lay atop the real prize, the gator eggs.

"Hiding them to the side, sneaky," Hord says, plucking them up one by one, occasionally glancing over his shoulder, on the lookout for a defensive attack from the female gator.

"They're always here," he says. "Somewhere nearby. We just have to be very careful."

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