Episode
S2E11: Wildlife Officer Jeff Babauta - Gator Country!
- Podcast
- Nature's Secret Service
- Published
- Dec 9, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 4273
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://rss.com/podcasts/natures-secret-service/2378318
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/nature-s-secret-service-7185139/episodes/s2e11-wildlife-officer-jeff-babauta-gator-country/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/nature-s-secret-service-7185139/s2e11-wildlife-officer-jeff-babauta-gator-country.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Forty years after US Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent Marie Palladini took on alligator skin traffickers, Wildlife Officer Jeff Babauta of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was back at it trying to tackle illegal shenanigans associated with the American alligator. In his case, though, Jeff is onto widespread laundering of wild caught alligator eggs and hatchlings, an illegal business that can rack up hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of dollars in profits for traffickers. The practice seriously hampers alligator conservation and can have dramatic impacts on alligator nesting success from year to year.