Carl Hiaasen - Kick Ass - Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Already in peril, the panther's future would seem especially bleak after such a bad summer: six animals (four dead, two injured) removed from a total wild population that might not exceed 30.

Yet state biologists are not ready to panic. Far-ranging and fiercely territorial, the panther is subject to a natural mortality, even among younger animals. When two cats meet and battle in the wild, there is nothing that man can do.

"These losses appear to be tragic," Tom Logan says, "but they really are a part of what goes on."

Where there is death in the Big Cypress, there is also hope for life. Panther watchers are currently tracking three separate litters of healthy kittens—and hoping that enough of them will survive to carry on the species.

One of the great indoor sports for Floridians is browsing our souvenir shops, to see what tourists are buying.

Once I found a shark embryo in a jar. No joke: A store in Key West had an entire shelf of real shark embryos, bottled like dill pickles. This was promoted as a clever memento of one's tropical vacation.

These days you won't find so many baby sharks, on land or sea. We've done quite a job of slaughtering them.

Some of the killing occurs in the name of sport, because shark are fine game fish. Ernest Hemingway sometimes machine-gunned his initials into their heads. As a kid, I killed a few myself, though not so exuberantly.

In those days we never dreamed the ocean would run out of sharks, but that's what is happening. The big money is in the fins, which are sold in Asia for expensive sharkfin soup.

It's an obscene reason to annihilate the planet's most important wild predator. Without sharks, the complex ecology of the sea will go haywire. This year Florida adopted a good law stopping commercial shark fishing within the three-mile state waters. It also limited the sharks taken by recreational anglers to one per day. (Some days, you'd be lucky to see that many.)

The U.S. government became so alarmed by the decline of sharks that it proposed similar restrictions in national waters, up to 200 miles offshore. It also sought to ban the barbaric practice of "finning"—hacking the fins off live sharks and tossing their maimed bodies overboard.

Weeks before the shark rules were to become law, a campaigning-President Bush announced a 9o-day moratorium on all new federal regulations. Now, with the election over, the National Marine Fisheries Service has presented a revised shark plan, which goes into effect in January. It's not nearly as tough as the original.

"An unmitigated disaster," says Dr. Sam Gruber, a University of Miami biologist who's been studying sharks since 1960.

Though live finning is outlawed, the new guidelines still allow commercial fishermen to take 2,436 metric tons of coastal sharks annually—lemon, bull, tiger, nurse and several other species. Each recreational boat can kill four.

"It's a joke," says Gruber. "It legalizes the wholesale slaughter of these things, for no reason."

The fisheries service insists the regulations will reduce the harvest enough that shark populations will resurge. Some marine biologists are skeptical. Unlike most fish, sharks take years to mature, and reproduce in small numbers. It worked for 4 million centuries, but not so well in the last decade.

Gruber has watched the change. In 1986, he began studying the life cycles of 140 lemon sharks in a secluded bight near No Name Key. The next year, only 90 of the sharks remained. By 1989, all were gone.

Divers and charter captains report similar observations along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Some commercial boats have gone out of business or moved to North Carolina, where sharks migrate in concentrations along the continental shelf.

Sure, sharks have a PR problem. Bumblebees kill more humans, but sharks get the bad press. And TV is always a sucker for dockside footage of a dead Great White, rotting ferociously in the sun.

Scary or not, sharks play a critical role in keeping the seas bountiful. It's not easy to kill off a creature that's survived 400 million years, but we've found a way. The rich folk do like their soup.

Meanwhile, I'm steering clear of tourist shops, in case somebody gets the bright idea for manatee steak.

"El Presidente" died last week. Bullet in the head.

Those who loved her might have loved her too well.

El Presidente was an alligator who lived by the Last Chance Saloon in Florida City. She was eight feet long, half-blind, a favorite with bar patrons.

They thought she was a male, hence the nickname. Attempts at gender verification were deemed unwise.

Laura Dryer, who runs the Last Chance, says El Presidente was a fixture for 12 years. Never bothered anybody but the garfish.

Wildlife officers say she had become a threat because people came to feed her in the canal, which flanks busy U.S. 1. They feared a tourist or small child would tumble down the bank and get chomped.

Two citizen complaints were filed with the state Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission. Lawmen visited the scene.The verdict: El Presidente had to go.

"It met every criteria for a dangerous nuisance alligator," says Todd Hardwick, the man assigned to the capture. "It was 10 feet from U.S. 1, and a few feet from a bar where people were drinking."

One-eyed alligators and bleary-eyed partiers probably ought not to commingle, but through the years El Presidente and her fond admirers had no problems.

However, once branded a "nuisance," she was doomed. In gator-rich Florida, only the small ones are relocated. The large ones are harvested, because transfers are costly and often fruitless.

Recently a beloved alligator named Grandpa, in a rare clemency, was moved from Big Pine Key to Homosassa Springs. Bitten and abused by resident gators, Grandpa soon died.

So El Presidente received the customary sentence: death.

Hardwick, well-known capturer and rescuer of wild critters, holds the state trapper license for Dade and Monroe. He and two assistants got the call March 30 from Game and Fish.

Snagged with a fishing rod, El Presidente proved more manageable than her fans at the Last Chance. "They were ready to lynch me," Hardwick says.

Game officers prevented Dryer and others from blocking the capture. Mouth taped, the gator was hauled away and quickly killed with a .22. In this way, 4,632 nuisance gators were taken last year. The sale of the skin, at a state auction, is the trapper's fee.

Laura Dryer is heartsick and angry about El Presidente. "There was no justification for them to pull it out of the water and shoot it!"

Says Lt. Jeff Ardelean of Game and Fish: "They signed its death warrant by feeding it."

Indeed, El Presidente was one well-nourished saurian. At her death, she weighed 270 pounds. "Obese," says Hardwick. "The fattest eight-foot-four alligator we ever saw."

The girth of her tail was a Limbaughesque 32 inches, compared to the usual 18 or 19 inches of a gator that length.

Dryer says she didn't see throngs of people feeding El Presidente. She said the canal is teeming with fish, turtles and other natural cuisine upon which the gator gorged, though it's possible that customers donated high-calorie table scraps.

Inside the Last Chance Saloon, black armbands are worn in El Presidente's memory. Mourners don T-shirts denouncing the state: "Environmentally Protected, My Ass." There's even talk of a motorcycle run, to protest the killing.

Because of death threats, Todd Hardwick's house was put under police watch. Unaccustomed to the role of villain, he says he truly understands why people are upset.

It's easy to become attached to animals, even a crusty one-eyed alligator. Sadly, in these risky relationships, it's usually the reptile who winds up getting hurt.