How Florida Law Makes Gator Encounters More Dangerous

After a 10-foot-long alligator was spotted on the I-95 median in Jacksonville, Florida, law enforcement officers were forced to stand idly by because they lacked the proper permits to remove the gator. It wasn’t until Mike Dragich, a Nuisance Alligator Trapper licensed by the state, showed up sporting bare feet and camo accouterments that the alligator was wrestled and captured. While Dragich’s wrangling was impressive, the fact that cops had to wait for him to arrive raises the question: Why is alligator management so complicated in Florida? 

Like other government-sponsored conservation programs, Florida’s Alligator Management Program is a bureaucratic boondoggle. The program has five divisions governing gator interactions on private and public land, including the trapping of nuisance alligators like the one wrangled by Dragich. A “Nuisance Alligator Trapper” license, which garners an annual cost of $50, is required before individuals can remove alligators at least 4 feet in length that threaten people, pets, or property—even on privately owned land. And the licenses are limited in availability. Anyone who wishes to assist an alligator trapper has to have a license (a $52 annual fee). Trappers must also carry a harvest permit (an additional $62 annually) specifying how a nuisance alligator can be killed after capture. 

Additional and separate state licenses are required for alligator hunting, collecting hatchlings and/or eggs, farming, and meat processing. Alligators kept in captivity for educational purposes, exhibition, or sale need yet another license, and keeping an alligator for personal use requires a different pet license. Importing and exporting alligator products is under federal purview. 

All of these licenses and permits are limited in availability—only 113 trappers were permitted to serve 10,000 nuisance calls across Florida in 2023—and come with their own list of requirements, regulations, and costs. Meanwhile, any killing, possessing, or capturing of an alligator without the appropriate license is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment and up to a $5,000 fine. 

This complicated web of state regulations stems from the ongoing federal oversight of the American Alligator. Although the reptile has been deemed fully recovered since 1987, today’s 5 million gators across Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and parts of North and South Carolina are considered “threatened due to similarity of appearance” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because they look similar to the American Crocodile—another threatened reptile—that only inhabits the southern parts of Florida. Under this categorization, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, limits the number of alligators killed by requiring a federally issued tag accompany each harvested reptile. By issuing a limited number of tags, the federal government constrains the alligator market and encourages states to heavily regulate alligator interactions to ensure compliance. 

While today’s healthy number of alligators is often attributed to ESA limitations on commercial trade by federal agencies and certain conservationist groups, state regulations that embraced capitalist principles are what truly drove the population’s comeback. Conservation efforts undertaken by the states in the 1960s to simultaneously regulate alligator hunting while incentivizing private land owners to view gators and wetlands as an asset, not a liability, significantly increased the overall population before the ESA took effect in 1973. 

Listing alligators as endangered under the ESA may have hampered conservation efforts because it prohibited states from setting reasonable hunting and harvesting quotas. It wasn’t until the reptiles were reclassified to “threatened due to similarity of appearance” that states were given broader latitude to approach alligator management, including recreational and commercial harvesting. Ultimately, working with, not against, alligator hunters and traders and creating a legitimate market was key to the alligator’s stunning comeback. 

Florida’s stable and profitable 1.3 million alligator population stems largely from the state embracing, not limiting, commercial trade. However, Floridians still face onerous obstacles when interacting with the reptiles because of continued federal rules that penalize people and property owners from protecting themselves from gators. The police were able to call Dragich without getting hurt. Not everyone in Florida is that lucky.

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