Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades
(Flatiron, $30)
Rebecca Renner’s “nail-biter” of a book delivers “the intensity of the best true crime,” but with a wrinkle, said Marion Winik in People: The victims here are alligators, whose eggs are a hot target for poachers in Florida’s Everglades. “To write about both the poachers and the cops who stop them with equal grace and justice isn’t easy,” said Jessica Bryce Young in Orlando Weekly. But Renner, a native Floridian, “does service to wild Florida” by drawing others into an appreciation of its wonders through a story that’s “scrupulously reported but narratively tense,” and depicts the actions of the ostensible good guys and bad guys “without taking sides.”
“Renner builds the book around the stories of two poachers,” said Colette Bancroft in the Tampa Bay Times. One, Clarence Melvin “Peg” Brown, is said to have been the most prolific alligator poacher ever, killing thousands of gators in the first half of the 20th century while cleverly eluding rangers. Brown died in 1986, but Renner interviews his son to help get past the lore. The other featured poacher is a state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officer who went undercover nearly a decade ago to infiltrate a ring of armed harvesters who snuck through the swamplands stealing eggs from gator nests. The result is “an often thrilling story” that at once makes clear how poaching threatens the swamp ecosystem but whose destructive effects also pale in comparison with those of runaway development.
“Alligators aren’t easy poster children for conservation,” said Lydia Millet in The New York Times. Neither cuddly nor playful, they “crawl toward us out of the dark ooze, slowly opening long jaws lined with sharp teeth.” Even so, they’re “as singular and magnificent as the Everglades themselves,” and Renner treats them “with the love and respect they deserve,” just as she does the hardscrabble local people who know the swamps best. “Every species, and every person who fights for its continued existence, deserves a book like this—a book that explores the complexity of the nexus between humans and animals and the exploitation of the wild.”