A changing climate is bringing new animals to public spaces
The end of summer 2024 brought several massive hurricanes to the East Coast, flooding homes, destroying power grids, and costing hundreds of billions in recovery dollars. But across the Southeast, beyond heavier rain, drought, and other changes in climate, there have been more instances in which animals like alligators are spotted outside their historical territories.
Even if leaders work in a rainy southern state, they may still grapple with how to handle unexpected animal sightings in a park, by rolling out animal conservation measures or clearing such creatures from human spaces.
Recognize Growth Vs. Natural Expansion
Jeb Linscombe, the Alligator Program Manager with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the Chairman of the Alligator Working Group with the Southeast Fish and Wildlife Agency, says that, while coastal Louisiana has always been home to alligators and remains home to 90 percent of the state’s population, the animal’s living trends have changed in recent years.
“Their population is growing in central and north Louisiana, which is the case for most rain states other than Louisiana and Florida,” he says. “You see growing numbers in those states, and oftentimes, it is in environments where there are parks. Not just parks, but, for example, in South Carolina, we have a lot of gators in urban sprawl.”
The gator’s reach is expanding into unexpected places because gators were almost extricated from the Southeast from the 1940s to the 1960s, due to demand on the black market. The population recovered through conservation efforts in Louisiana and Florida and along the Texas coast prior to expanding into more inland territories.
“It’s really population expansion versus growth, but expansion into their original range,” Linscombe says.
This is especially important for the public to understand: Alligators are not exactly new to the Southeast. They just haven’t been around for a while.
Understand Socialization-Related Threats
Alligators can indeed coexist in spaces that people use regularly. For example, tourists in New Orleans often pop into the iconic City Park to enjoy views of massive oak trees and peeps at alligators in numerous waterways. But for all the Spanish moss of City Park, Linscombe rejects the idea that alligators belong in the city from an ecological perspective.
“City Park is not really a true wetland, but they wander into there,” he says. “Jean Lafitte National Park and Lake Fausse Pointe State Park are true wetland habitats.”
When alligators are in their natural habitats, the likelihood they will become socialized with people is lower. They have ample opportunities to swim away or nestle into thickets of cypress in swamps. If alligators get too accustomed to people, it increases the threat to the public, which is when wildlife management forces are brought in to transport or euthanize the animals.
“The most irresponsible thing you could do is feed alligators, and in most states, it’s illegal,” says Linscombe. “They start to think of humans as a handout.… You have to view them from a safe distance, don’t feed them, don’t harass them, and [as a park, advertise] what you should and shouldn’t do.”
Get On Top Of Social Media
Rob Colvin, the Region 1 Biodiversity Coordinator for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), works with both native and invasive animals throughout the state to determine the best strategies to minimize risk and implement conservation strategies. Alligators are becoming more prominent throughout the state due to changing migratory patterns and climate change.
“In a drought year with less water, I may see them more than [in] years with more water,” he says. “Tennessee historically is the American alligator range in the southwest corner, and is still where most of our gators are.”
Colvin says managing the influx of social media when a gator appears in a public space or waterway tends to be one of the most challenging tasks for the department. His communications colleagues must stay on top of posts and resident concerns to provide accurate information.
“It causes a lot of initial chaos.… We have a really good social media team to mitigate some of these problems [and explain] that alligators are historically native to this state,” he says.
Lightning-fast social media communication is critical in Tennessee, specifically because alligators are a protected species. Residents cannot shoot or hunt gators, and officials cannot actively release them or move them when they do show up. If a park or region is in the same boat, it may be a worthy investment to ramp up the agency’s social media presence to avoid uninformed public attitudes that may hurt the species’ future growth.
Get Comfortable With Harvesting
It may seem counterintuitive, but creating tax incentives for hosting alligators on private lands, and even in parks, does wonders for the gators, as well as other species.
“Alligators are quite possibly one of the oldest species in existence in coastal weather,” says Linscombe. “Managing alligators as a commercial resource is why we have been so successful.”
In coastal Louisiana, where 80 percent of wetlands were privately owned, there were no incentives to manage alligators until the 1970s. In that decade, programs incentivized landowners for the recreational harvest of alligators for their meat and hide. Those incentives to host alligators on public property led to greater efforts to protect and manage the population, along with their accompanying wetlands, because the entire package had commercial value.
For Linscombe, the ecological benefits of preserving wetlands are not only tremendous for alligators, but for hundreds of other reptiles, amphibians, and birds. Leaders should look into whether a state offers any incentives for hosting native animals on public or private park lands as a means of conservation. It may be a way to both draw in visitors and qualify an agency or department for financial support.
Inform The Public
Numerous websites from government-affiliated agencies regularly share facts with the public about what to expect from alligators. Linscombe recommends lagatorprogram.com as a resource to learn more about the species, including its history and preferred habitats, as well as the do’s and don’ts of potentially including alligators in park parameters. If other types of animals are native yet intrusive from a public-safety perspective, like bears or bison, look into state resources about the appropriate safeguards to educate the public.
For alligators, common-sense measures include posting plenty of signage to inform park visitors of an animal’s presence nearby. Linscombe says that, depending on the type of ecosystem within a park, an enclosure with a pond or lake element can be a better alternative versus letting the animal roam freely.
“It could be fenced off in an aesthetically pleasing way without direct contact between humans and alligators,” he says.
Additionally, let the public know that, when in doubt, they should call an applicable wildlife agency about any animals that may seem odd or out of place, whether a gator in an unexpected location or an exotic household pet that has escaped. Entities like TWRA depend on that data to track growing animal populations across the state.
“I keep records. I want to know where any gators are, keep the coordinates, and try to get a better understanding of the population to know how many we’ve got and what they’re doing, like if they’re spending winter here and moving back south,” he says.
Consider Future Changes
Louisiana differs from Tennessee because it has always been home to a significant population of alligators. Thus, Linscombe says the team is “past that hump” of dealing with nuisance alligators in urban environments. The heavy lifting was done 15 to 20 years ago, to the point that there are only 1,000 to 2,000 nuisance animals identified across the state each year. The team is accustomed to handling them and uses its harvesting program to put animals to use in case they do need to be euthanized.
For Colvin in Tennessee, he predicts that more public spaces will see an uptick in new creatures in years to come, and people are partly to blame.
“Whatever causes it, politics or climate change, there is a huge influx of people moving to Tennessee from California and the West,” he says. “The amount of development going on is decreasing available habitat, so more human interactions with alligators and venomous snakes are resulting from steadily taking that habitat away.”
