The alligators are making a comeback because it is financially profitable to use their skins, not despite it.

Not at all. Once it became illegal to harvest them, they multiplied. Besides, aren't most allegator hides from farmed animals?

As to tropical hardwoods, they are typically slow growing and poachers aren't about to wait a century to grow a new one. It takes a good deal of willpower or law enforcement to leave a tree worth thousands in the wild.