SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — Sidling up to Bird Blind No. 5 along the convention center boardwalk one early summer morning last week, a small sign tied to the railing with fluorescent orange rope is either a warning or a promise of delight.
It reads, “Alligator sighting.”
The bird blind, one of several along the boardwalk, is a wooden open-air shack with railings, raised on pilings just above the reach of the freshwater marsh.
Directly below the sign, sunning in the muddy shallows next to Bird Blind No. 5, is as fine a specimen of Alligator mississippiensis as you’re going to find — 8-plus feet of him in all his gray-green leathery glory.
This could be the scene of the crime.
Alligator feedlot
“I have not personally seen people feeding them, we have just gotten a report of it,” said Capt. James Dunks, a Texas game warden, who notes that state law backs up common sense and that feeding alligators is a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $500.
Dunks said the gator feeding rumor originated from the area around the South Padre Island Convention Center.
“It’s right there by the World Birding Center on the Island,” he said. “There’s been an alligator there for years, and it’s kind of been an attraction over there. There have never been any problems, but if people do start feeding them, there are going to be some issues.”
It may surprise some, but alligators are not uncommon in Cameron County.
“There are alligators all over Cameron County,” Dunks said. “There are different areas where we’ve caught people feeding them before. Another common place is Highway 106 by the refuge (Laguna Atascosa) at the bridge, but it’s a long time since we’ve had anybody actually feed one.”
First-name basis
Our handsome 8-foot male gator beneath the bird blind, it turns out, is named “Banker.”
And somewhere a few hundred feet away protecting her nest and eggs is his counterpart, “Charlene.”
Old-timers on the boardwalk here say Banker gets his name for his tendency to treat the freshwater marsh like he owns it, which as the apex predator here, is pretty much the case. He often swims down the canals to find a brightly lit bank on which to sun-bathe.
As for Charlene, this is the fourth year she has nested in the marsh.
When asked about rumors of gators being fed chickens, the men on the boardwalk said they haven’t noticed anything like that lately. But several years ago they said a nature guide fed the gators for a while to ensure they would be present to end the tours with a big reptilian bang.
Texas-sized gators
The biggest Texas gator that Jonathan Warner has seen in the wild during his tenure as Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s alligator program leader is around 13 feet.
“You hear some crazy stories but certainly the biggest I’ve seen is just over 13 feet,” he said. “Those really, really big old males aren’t super common but I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t have quite a few 14-footers in some of these ecosystems in Texas.”
Warner is passionate about his Texas alligators, and said the big reptiles have been officially recorded in 123 counties. Although TPWD conducts surveys, he said the watery habitat gators like and their preference to stay out of sight make it hard to say just how many gators are in Cameron County — or anywhere else for that matter.
“Alligators, just because of their life history and highly aquatic lifestyles, are notoriously difficult to conduct population surveys for,” he said. “As an agency, we’ve got a couple dozen spotlight transects that we run every summer in June across the state to kind of give us an index as to what the population is doing.
“We also fly extensively in the month of July to count alligator nests all along the coast to give us some kind of a metric as to what the population is doing,” he added.
His best guess for all of Texas? “In the ballpark of half-a-million.”
Problem gators
Like Game Warden Dunks, Warner also says it’s a very bad idea to allow alligators to link humans with easy meals.
“The situation there, the game warden is obviously correct,” Warner said. “It’s actually against the law in statute that you cannot feed alligators in Texas. They’re normally very shy animals and naturally afraid of people and don’t want anything to do with us and really only become problems once they begin to be fed and they associate humans with food.”
And that is when TPWD gets the call.
“The alligator program which I’m in charge of has a very extensive nuisance alligator control program where we have quite a few individuals across the state that are specially trained and permitted by the department to go in and remove alligators when they become nuisances,” he said. “So when they’ve lost their fear of people, if they’re being fed, if there’s one in the middle of I-10 in the middle of the night and they’re a danger or any threat to public safety, we’ve got a pretty strict protocol in ways we deal with that.”
On the one hand, dealing with a problem gator is no fun for anyone, including the reptile. But Warner also considers the occasional nuisance gator preferable to having no gators at all.
“The American alligator is really one of the more impressive conservation success stories in the fact that they were hunted almost to extinction in many places by the 1960s,” he said.
But thanks to federal and state protections, and the buy-in of Americans who also saw and were concerned about the gator population’s decline, the American alligator population has rebounded to the point where Texas offers permitted gator hunts in the spring and fall.
“There’s somewhat of a stigma attached to alligators, and there are a lot of misconceptions about how dangerous they are,” Warner said. “But in most cases having a healthy alligator population in your ecosystem is great, it’s important, it’s an indicator that you probably have healthy fish stocks and turtles and all the other natural components of that ecosystem.
“It’s a good sign,” he added. “It’s not a bad thing to see an alligator.”
Don’t — Kill, harass, molest or attempt to move alligators. State law prohibits such actions, and the likelihood of being bitten or injured is high.
Do — Call your TPWD regional office if you encounter a nuisance gator that has lost its fear of people
Don’t — Allow children to play in or around water by themselves
Do — Closely supervise children when playing in or around water
Don’t — Swim at night or at dusk or dawn when alligators most actively feed
Do — Swim only during daylight hours
Don’t — Feed or entice alligators — it’s a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $500
Do — Inform others that feeding alligators creates problems for people who want to use the water for recreation
Don’t — Throw fish scraps into the water or leave them on shore since it can draw gators
Do — Dispose of fish scraps in garbage cans
Don’t — Remove any alligators from their natural habitat or accept one as a pet since it’s against state law
Source: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission
The original range of the species extended as far north as New Jersey, southward to the South Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, inland to the confluence of the Arkansas River with the Mississippi River and westward to the 100th meridian in Texas. Today, the alligator’s range extends east to the Carolinas, west to Texas and north to Arkansas.
Alligators were nearly exterminated and in 1967 were listed as an endangered species. In 1969, Texas provided complete protection for the alligator.
In 1984, after 15 years of protection, Texas began harvesting wild alligators through a carefully monitored program.
In 1987, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pronounced the American alligator fully recovered and consequently removed the animal from the endangered species list.
Alligator facts
In captivity, female alligators may reach 30 years of age and males 60
The longest documented alligator was taken in 1890 from Louisiana, measuring 19 feet, 2 inches and weighing an estimated 2,000 pounds
In Texas, the largest wild alligator harvested since the reopening of the hunting season in 1984 was a male measuring 14 feet 4 inches which was taken near West Columbia in Jackson County
Source: TPWD
