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Louisiana’s alligator management program may be a victim of its own success.
State wildlife officials and alligator dealers say that some large landowning companies whose acreage is prime hunting grounds for wild alligators are not expected to send harvesting teams out because the price paid for carcasses is too low due to a glut.
“We’re not buying this year for the first time,” said Al Marmande of Dularge, whose seafood company usually purchases wild alligators during the season. “Nobody is buying from us because the price is too low.”
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is still issuing tags for the 2017 harvest – there is no cancellation of the hunt – but the agency has been told by some bug landowners that they don’t plan to use the gator tags reserved for them.
Alligator prices have plunged to less than $10 per foot and are not expected to go higher. A proliferation of farmed alligators is cited as a key reason for the price drop.
This year’s month-long season opens Aug. 30 and closes Sept.27.
Ed Mouton, director of Louisiana’s alligator program, said it is always possible that landowners could change their minds at the last minute. The choices of individual landowners, he said, will not affect most people who participate in the hunt. The lottery conducted for people wishing to hunt on publicly owned lands, he said, is not affected either.
Prices were as much as $20 per alligator foot last year. They had generally been at $30 per foot in 2013 and 2014, down from a peak in the 1980s of $40 per foot or more.
