{"id":898175,"date":"2026-10-29T01:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T01:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898175\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T01:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T01:20:16","slug":"how-many-alligators-are-in-florida-the-state-once-counted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898175\/","title":{"rendered":"How many alligators are in Florida? The state once counted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 The conventional wisdom in Florida is that if you see a body of water, assume there is a gator in it. After all, there are an estimated 1.3 million of them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">But some bodies of water have more than others \u2014 quite a few more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission used to take an alligator census of up to 100 bodies of water around Florida. The last census was in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">[PINIT! <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clickorlando.com\/features\/2026\/10\/27\/have-a-great-photo-heres-how-to-pinit-and-share-with-news-6-and-the-world\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.clickorlando.com\/features\/2026\/10\/27\/have-a-great-photo-heres-how-to-pinit-and-share-with-news-6-and-the-world\/\">Are there gators where you live? Share your photos!<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">The census was an estimate. As you can imagine, counting alligators is no easy task, let alone counting them accurately.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">To do so, researchers drove a boat at night along the shores of each body of water. Alligators are most active at night, and the boat\u2019s spotlight made the gators\u2019 eyes shine red, making it easier to count them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">FWC included a standard error that varies depending on the body of water.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">It should surprise no one that Lake Okeechobee, Florida\u2019s largest lake, also has the most gators, according to the most recent data obtained by News 6 through a public records request. The survey was conducted between May and August 2023. Officials counted 24,678 gators in the large South Florida Lake.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">The Central Florida lake with the most alligators is Lake Kissimmee, along the Osceola-Polk county line, where 15,404 gators were counted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">After that, Lake Jesup in Seminole County comes in third with 11,881 gators.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">Orange Lake along the Marion-Alachua county line has 11,544 gators and ranks fourth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">Rounding out the Top Five is Lake Poinsett, part of the St. Johns River, which is along the Brevard-Orange-Osceola county border.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">FWC only had recent data for 55 of the waterways as part of the alligator census, but the FWC estimate comes out to 210,485 gators just in those waterways.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">FWC also estimates there are about 1.3 million alligators throughout Florida.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">Wherever you see a gator, FWC officials remind people to keep their distance from it. Never feed a gator and only swim in designated swimming areas during daylight hours. Also, keep pets on a leash when you\u2019re near the water.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">To learn more about Florida\u2019s alligator population, check out <a href=\"https:\/\/myfwc.com\/wildlifehabitats\/wildlife\/alligator\/facts\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2024 by WKMG ClickOrlando &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 The conventional wisdom in Florida is that if you see a body of water, assume&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[24431,1147,2808,79,17841,201],"class_list":["post-898175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-alligators","tag-animals","tag-florida","tag-science","tag-strange-florida","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}