Recession bites into alligator skin business

The worldwide recession has stifled the market for Louisiana alligator skins, reports the New York Times. Last year, farmers collected more than 500,000 alligator eggs from the wild, so they could grow the gators in tanks. The newspaper notes that this year, many farmers did not pick up a single egg. But while the number of people willing to spend $12,000 on a watch with an alligator band has declined, some farmers are blaming the drop in demand on hoarding of skins. “It’s like a marriage,” says Tommy Fletcher, an alligator farmer in Raceland. “It was a bumpy road, and then all of a sudden it was over.” Read the full story here.