Alligator hunt helps manage thriving iconic species

A few minutes earlier, she and her group had been up close with an 11. Lynn Baulch sat on the front seat of an airboat Thursday morning, watching excitedly as several dozen young alligators slithered and jostled against each other in a nest on the St. Johns River. Baulch compared Thursday's excursion with a trip to Egypt two years ago. "The earth trembles with his thunder," naturalist William Bartram wrote of his encounter with alligators in the St. Johns in 1774. "This ranks right up there with that," Baulch told tour boat captain, Joshua Mattson of Glenwood. 5-foot alligator sunning on the riverbank.


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