A giant alligator more than 12 feet long and weighing 463 pounds collided with a truck with a trailer while crossing an interstate highway in northwest Florida, local media reported Friday.
The photograph of the huge immobilized reptile with its jaws sealed next to a girl is now prominent in most of Florida’s media.
He told Orlando’s WESH 2 channel Broderick Vaughan, who was the one who caught him after the crash on a stretch of I-10 in Leon County, is one of the biggest alligators he has had to deal with in his life .
Vaughan’s company has a contract with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission to take care of the “annoying” alligators.
In this case, he said, will have to be sacrificed because it exceeds the measures set to be returned to nature without representing a danger.
The population of American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) in Florida, a species that from 1967 to 1987 was included in the list of animals in danger in the United States, today totals about 1.3 million copies and has remained stable for decades.
Alligators have an important role in the Floridian ecosystem, which is why they are protected, although there is a telephone line to call for dangerous situations.
A study by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), recently presented at Unesco, states that one million animal and plant species are at risk of extinction, many in the coming decades, unless there is a radical change in the methods of production and consumption.
