{"id":54087,"date":"2025-10-03T21:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T21:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/54087\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T21:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T21:40:07","slug":"these-wildlife-investigators-went-full-csi-mode-to-save-endangered-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/54087\/","title":{"rendered":"These Wildlife Investigators Went Full CSI Mode To Save Endangered Species"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is one of the reasons Jeff Babauta, a retired Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer who also spoke at CrimeCon, worked undercover as an alligator farmer. Alligator farming in Florida <a href=\"https:\/\/myfwc.com\/wildlifehabitats\/wildlife\/alligator\/farming\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-skimlinks-tracking=\"7951162\" data-affiliate=\"true\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">requires a license<\/a> and a limited number of permits are granted, so he had the tricky assignment of identifying illegal farmers.<\/p>\n<p>During a yearslong sting operation, aimed at preventing alligators from returning to Florida\u2019s endangered species list, Babauta raised more than 10,000 alligators.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot one of these stayed in the state of Florida,\u201d Babauta told me. \u201cThey were all shipped out. So if this trend continued, I was afraid that we were going to go back and put the alligator back on the endangered species list\u201d after decades of being on a \u201cspecial concern\u201d status, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI dedicated my career to protecting our resources, and that&#8217;s why I took the challenge,\u201d Babauta said.<\/p>\n<p>Again, alligator farming is not illegal in Florida, but the high demand \u2014 mostly by the fashion industry, who uses the animals\u2019 hides in luxury apparel and handbags, shoes, luggage and belts \u2014 attracts bad actors who bypass regulations and threaten the species.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere&#8217;s this demand cycle that you have to break, and part of it is breaking the criminal enterprises that are involved, making it more difficult for them to do business,\u201d Newcomer said. \u201cPart of it is deterring people by putting them in jail and taking their money. And the third is to educate people, because a lot of people don&#8217;t know [the laws].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For example, Newcomer said, \u201ca lot of Americans go on vacation in Mexico, see a sea turtle shell for sale, and they buy it because they think it&#8217;s cool. Well, sea turtles are endangered, and you can&#8217;t import them into the United States, and suddenly they&#8217;re crossing the border with a sea turtle\u2019s shell.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is one of the reasons Jeff Babauta, a retired Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer who&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141,4054,14229],"class_list":{"0":"post-54087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-timely","13":"tag-true-crime"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}