(Louisiana Illuminator) - Bonafide Louisiana residents will soon be allowed to hunt alligators for sport, but it won’t be the open-season, no-limits culling of the swamps people might imagine.
The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission issued official notice May 7 to establish a recreational alligator hunting season in Louisiana, the same day Gov. Jeff Landry signed two bills to legalize the creation of a hunting season and tag lottery.
Louisiana’s recreational alligator hunting season will start Oct. 1 across the entire state and end Oct. 31.
“People are excited,” state Sen. Robert Allain, R-Franklin, said at last week’s Wildlife and Fisheries Commission meeting. “I think it’s long overdue, and I think it’s a great way to be a little proactive, maybe get ahead of our growing alligator population.”
The wild alligator population in Louisiana has risen from just 100,000 to more than 3 million over the past 50 years, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
“We’ve always had recreational harvest. We do have lottery tags on our [wildlife management areas], but that’s very, very different than what we’re proposing,” said Jeb Linscombe, the alligator program biologist for the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, at the meeting.
The American alligator is considered a prime example of conservation success after regaining enough population to be removed from the federal government’s endangered species list in 1987. Over-hunting brought the species to the brink of extinction, landing it on the list in 1973. Wildlife officials limited the taking of alligator eggs and encouraged farming to help increase the species’ numbers in the wild.
Today, state wildlife officials and lawmakers believe more can be hunted, but there are strict efforts in place to try and keep the alligator’s esteemed position as a conservation success story.
“This is not just a free-for-all,” Linscomb said. “It’s not like everybody can go out in Louisiana and kill an alligator.”
Anyone wishing to take alligators in the state’s recreational harvest program must buy a specific hunting license for the reptile, in addition to holding a general state hunting license, for the nonrefundable price of $25.
Hunters must also pay $50 to enter a lottery to win tags, with each giving the holder permission to hunt and kill one alligator. Five thousand lucky winners will receive two tags each, provided they are at least 16 years old and live in Louisiana. That’s a maximum total of 10,000 alligators available to recreational hunters.
Non-residents may also participate in the hunt as long as they accompany a resident lottery winner, but they’ll need a general Louisiana hunting license and a $150 out-of-state alligator permit.
Tags will be distributed across the state based on the numbers of alligators already being harvested in other, separate programs to prevent a drastic reduction of their numbers.
Aside from the rules to prevent alligator overharvesting, the state’s new recreational program has rules against gator waste after it’s killed.
“There was concern that there’s people that really won’t know what they’re doing, newbies, so to speak, that are going to get out there and they may shoot this animal and just waste it,” Linscombe said. “That’s not what we want to occur.”
The pending rules have provisions against “wanton waste,” meaning a hunter must make a “concerted effort” to preserve, at the very least, the meat of a harvested alligator and dispose of the remains away from public water bodies.
“You will not be able to bring this animal home and throw it away,” Linscombe said. “You can dispose of the head, the hide, feet, back, all those things. But you have to make a concerted effort to preserve the meat for consumption.”
The Wildlife and Fisheries Commission anticipates the final rules to be made official by Aug. 20.
Members of the public can comment on the proposed rules starting Wednesday, when they are published in the federal register, until June 26. The can be submitted by mail to: Jeb Linscombe, Alligator Program Biologist, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, 200 Dulles Drive, Lafayette, LA, 70506; or via e-mail to jlinscombe@wlf.la.gov.
