American alligator and conservation efforts

DEFINITION: Crocodilian species native to the southeastern United States

Once an endangered species, the American alligator made a striking comeback in the last few decades of the twentieth century, thanks to conservation efforts.

The American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) is a surviving member of the crocodilians—a family of reptiles that roamed the earth along with dinosaurs 230 million years ago. Ranging between 2.5 and 4.6 meters (8 to 15 feet) in length and weighing up to 450 kilograms (1,000 pounds), it is the largest reptile in North America.

The American alligator inhabits coastal areas, swamps, ponds, and marshes of the southeastern United States, from North Carolina to Florida and along the Gulf Coast to Texas. Spanish explorers were the first Europeans to come across the American alligator, which they named el lagarto (“the lizard”), an expression Americans later turned into “alligator.” Various descriptions of alligators by eighteenth-century trappers, explorers, adventurers, and naturalists quickly earned the reptile a place in legend and folklore. Americans and Europeans alike became fascinated with false, but entertaining, portrayals of the reptile as an almost mythological, smoke-breathing dragon.

Although White southerners and Indigenous Americans hunted the alligator for centuries, the reptile faced no serious, widespread threat as a species until the 1870s, when a worldwide demand arose for its soft hides, which were turned into belts, hats, shoes, and handbags. Their value grew in the following decades, and by the 1940s, alligator populations were so dangerously reduced that southern states outlawed the hunting and trapping of the reptiles. These actions, however, stimulated illegal poaching during the 1960s and drove the alligator to the brink of extinction.

In 1973, the US government put the alligator—along with its cousin, the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus)—on the endangered species list and banned the trafficking of its hides. The protection worked so well that alligators were removed from the endangered list in 1987 and were considered a species of least concern until 2020, when the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classified the American Crocodile as vulnerable on the Red List of Threatened Species. Open hunting of alligators is still illegal, though some states, including Florida and Louisiana, allow permitted hunts to control alligator populations and protect fur-bearing animals.

Other problems, however, confront the American alligator. Land development continues to destroy its natural habitat, but human activity also creates new artificial living spaces for alligators in canals and drainage ditches. These new environs often put alligators in close proximity to humans. As a result, alligators commonly appear in the swimming pools or yards of private homes, on docks, at highway toll booths, and even at schools and shopping centers, and their encounters with humans are on the rise. Though alligators feed mainly on fish, snails, crabs, amphibians, and small mammals, they also occasionally consume dogs, cats, and even calves. Attacks on humans, especially small children, are rare—only about thirty people were killed by alligators from 1948 to 2023—but these incidents increased somewhat as humans began encountering alligators more frequently. In 2023, Florida recorded twenty-three attacks, the highest in thirty years.

Pollution also threatens alligators. In 1996, researchers from the University of Florida reported serious reproductive problems among alligators in Lake Apopka, Florida’s third-largest lake. The researchers suspected that the fertility problems were the result of a 1980 chemical spill and agricultural pesticide runoff into the lake. According to one University of Florida study, Lake Apopka lost 90 percent of its alligator population in a twenty-year period. More research is needed to determine whether the Lake Apopka situation is an isolated case or an indicator of a wider problem that could again put alligators in grave danger.

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