The Many Meanings of the American Alligator

The American Alligator has always been an important part of the Everglades ecosystem – yet the way people have viewed, used, and applied meaning to alligators has morphed and grown over the years.  The significance of alligators to the human inhabitants of south Florida has shaped how we interact with this amazing species and has radically shaped their fate.

In today’s post I will attempt to sift through some of these diverse meanings from past to present: 

American Alligator in Everglades Nat'l Park

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Deep fried alligator tail

1.     Alligator as commodities.

Though purses and boots made of alligator leather have been a part of fashion for some time – a practice that can be dated back to the 1700’s - alligator has often been hunted and used for a variety of purposes.  Alligator leather became important during the Civil War as a substitute for cow leather, which was rare due to naval blockades, and during the same era fat from alligators was even used to make soap and lubricate cotton machinery.  In the early period of Florida statehood, trade in alligator leather was an important industry – exporting 280,000 skins annually, worth approximately $10 million in today’s dollars.  Alligator meat and even eggs became apart of southeastern cuisine in the mid 1800’s and continues to be on offer today.  As a tourist in the early 1900’s you could even take home a live pet baby alligator – though this often did not end well for either the alligator or the would be owner.  Tourists today still take home teeth, claws, and stuffed or mounted skulls, however. Yet, alligators didn’t always get the attention they maybe deserved…

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2.     Alligators as invisible.

Despite the alligator’s varied and widespread economic importance as a commodity and the rate at which they were being hunted in the state, the Florida Game and Fish Commission did not even begin reporting on alligators until 1936, more than two decades after it began annual reporting on other game species in the state such as fish and deer.  The invisibility of alligators during this time was likely due to several facts.  Firstly, alligators simply did not fit in any readily available category used by the FGFC at the time – it was neither a fish nor an animal trapped for its fur pelt.  Furthermore, in contrast to other big game of the time whose conservation efforts were being led by upper class recreational hunters, alligators were primarily hunted as an economic resource of the rural poor.  Relatedly, large-scale efforts were underway in this time drain and reclaim large sections of the “swamp”, the alligator’s main habitat.  The need to protect this landscape, the wildlife that inhabited it, or the people that utilized it were not a priority among economic or political powers at the time.  All of this was going to soon change for the alligator however…

Alligator hunter in Florida, ca. 1920

Vintage Florida postcard, cardcow.com

Disney movie poster filmed in the Everglades, 1953

3.     Alligators as symbols of Florida’s wildlife.

Florida’s tourism industry was growing in the mid 20th century and part of the allure was the landscape and the iconic, exotic wildlife.  The alligator had slowly become a symbol of “untamed” Florida nature, which tourists expected to experience.  Alligators showed up on many postcards and advertisements of the time – often shown as larger than life.  This focus of public attention led to a pivot in FGFC policy with their 1941 Bienniel Report stating that the alligator had become “representative of Florida’s distinctive wildlife” particularly “in the minds of many who have never been to this State.”  This is an important distinction because it tells us that the alligator’s importance to the state and the resulting legislative attempts at conservation were the result not of people seeing these animals and growing to appreciate and value them, but instead grew out of their symbolic place in the collective imagination of our nation’s interest in Florida at the time.  Alligators had come to represent something wild and exotic and their connection with those ideas, and our desire to protect them, led to yet another incarnation…

4.     Alligators as contraband.

In response to this new symbolic importance to the state’s natural landscapes and associated tourism, regulatory efforts were stepped up significantly.  Restrictions were instituted in several counties on everything from hunting to the possession and selling of alligators and their derivatives.  Penalties included fines and jail time and were often much stiffer than comparable offenses for other species.  Regulating the supply-side of the alligator trade proved to be incredibly ineffective at stopping hunting practices.  Instead, these regulations dramatically reshaped the culture and practices of the local people that had hunted alligators legally for generations.  Elaborate means of evading game wardens became common – such as hunters driving into the glades in the middle of the night and then hiking miles into the swamp, covering their tracks as they went; bundling and sinking alligator skins under the water far from their camps; and developing elaborate, one-way hunting paths so that steps were never retraced.  Often these strategies took advantage of the fuzzy political boundaries between neighboring counties with varying levels of regulation.  Few of these newly designated ‘poachers’ were ever caught and the hunting and exporting of alligator skins was not effectively slowed.  The shifting cultural landscape however led to outbreaks of violence both between different groups of different hunters and between hunters and game wardens.  The failure of these regulations led to a recognition of the alligator’s impending fate…

FWC filming a poaching video, 1969

Alligator hunter camp before restrictions, ca. 1880

5.     Alligators as imperiled.

Hunting practices were far from the only threat facing alligators during this era.  Large-scale destruction of Everglade’s habitat, re-engineering of natural water flows, and a booming population on the southeastern coast of the state all worked synergistically to decrease alligator numbers.  It is difficult therefore to tease out the primary cause of the dwindling population.  By the end of the 1940’s there was increasing recognition that alligator’s were headed for extinction if nothing was changed, resulting in a yearlong moratorium on their hunting throughout the entire state in 1949 (though as we’ve seen these measures were hardly successful).  Effective change did not occur until regulatory efforts shifted from supply-side hunting bans to demand-side market interventions.  In 1969, several states banned the sale of endangered species and their products and in the same year an amendment to the Lacey Act made it illegal to trade poached animals across state lines.  The status of alligator populations was officially recognized as threatened with extinction a few years later when the Endangered Species Act was passed.   Fortunately for us today…

6.     Alligators as a nuisance.

Alligator populations recovered incredibly between the 1970s and 1990s.  The new market regulations were significantly more effective at deterring hunting and several efforts were made during this era to restore and preserve the natural Everglades habitat.  These combined efforts led to the removal of the American Alligator from the endangered species list in 1987, though it remains protected because of its resemblance to the much more threatened American Crocodile.  Today, alligator management in Florida involves significant removal of “nuisance” alligators (which must be larger than 4 feet and must be “perceived to be a threat” to humans or pets).  The number of alligators removed by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has grown steadily since 1977 while number of attacks,always quite low, have remained mostly steady.  Permits are issued to alligator trappers who are allowed to sell the meat and skin and share profits with the FWC, once again created a legal space for alligator hunting to take place in Florida.

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Today we can see evidence of all of these many “versions” of the American Alligator, overlapping and informing how we interact with the species.  Tourists driving across “alligator alley” still stop at roadside attractions where they can stand in awe of live alligators as the mark of a real Everglades experience and then commemorate that experience with a plate of alligator bites and an alligator skin bag.  Alligators are omnipresent through much of Florida’s natural waterways and are not an uncommon site basking by the sides of lakes, reminding us just how wild Florida used to be and still is.   Yet, when one makes its way into your swimming pool, one may feel that “nature” is a bit too close and can place a call to have it removed.