Alligators making a home in North Alabama

Alligators and armadillos - oh my!

North Alabama is now home to numerous non-native creatures that have crept, walked and even been driven into the region and found any and all biological advantages necessary to live in a region that may be cooler, wetter or just plain different from home.

The latest reminder that "we aren't in Kansas" anymore - or south Florida for that matter - occurred in mid-June week when officials removed an alligator from a privately owned pond in Danville, a small community 10 miles southeast of Decatur.

Officials released the 8-foot gator in an undisclosed location.

But the question remains: Gators in Florida, sure, even in south Alabama, but gators in northern Alabama?

Like many introduced animal and plant species, alligators, which are native to southern Alabama, have a part truthful, part mythical history of how they came to live in an area once formidable to them.

This much is known: In 1979, 55 alligators from southern Louisiana were released at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge to help the then-endangered species thrive and to help control the beaver population, according to Bill "Gator" Gates, wildlife biologist at the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge.

Before their official introduction, alligator sightings at the Wheeler refuge date back to 1964, though in the 1975 tome, "The Reptiles and Amphibians of Alabama" the range of alligators was noted not to extend in the northern half of Alabama.

Stan Stewart, wildlife biologist based in Birmingham, said he thought alligators were introduced at Wheeler during the 1940s and 1950s for unknown experimental reasons.

Regardless of the exact time frame, Vinny Grosso, shelter manager at the Florence-Lauderdale Animal Shelter and local wildlife enthusiast said, "I don't want to scare people, but the alligators are here."

One family in Franklin County, who asked not to be named, found a five-foot alligator in their backyard pond in mid-June.

Joey Wimberley, who used to raise alligators as pets in Franklin County and studied herpetological, said that the alligator could be one of his he turned loose seven years ago.

"I didn't think he would survive the winter," Wimberley said. "They are definitely migrating north."

Wimberley, also a bass fisherman, said 20 years ago, alligators were never seen in Lake Tuscaloosa in the northern half of the state.

Now, he said he will see three to four gators in a tournament.

"They are coming north because of the warmer winters," Wimberley said. "I don't think we'll see a whole lot more than we see now."

Whether the estimated 60 or so alligators surviving and reproducing at the Wheeler refuge will jump the dams and become established elsewhere along the Tennessee River remains to be seen, but some experts think it may be possible in our lifetime.

Take the armadillo, for example.

A south Texas icon, the armor-shelled varmints are now road kill fixtures throughout the Shoals. They didn't exist here a generation ago.

Again, the story of how the armadillo reached north Alabama varies and illustrates how little is known about invasive animals considered by some as common as kudzu.

Ron Eakes, a state wildlife biologist, said the creatures probably got here on their own, but in some cases, the "novelty animal" might have been picked up as a potential pet, and after the novelty wore off, was turned out into the wilderness.

The first armadillos to cross the Mississippi River, and for that matter the Tennessee River, were sickly and suffered from respiratory infections, Grosso said. The humidity and the cold winters weren't right for the animals, but they have stayed and now thrive, he said.

Armadillos in north Alabama are the result of an expansion of the animals' natural range, said Keith Hudson, a wildlife biologist with the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries, who lives in Florence but works throughout northern Alabama. "They are making it very well."

Hudson, who said he was not familiar with any respiratory problems with armadillos said, "Cars are the number one limiting factor in armadillos."

This incongruity in natural histories may be due in part to the lack of research into invasive animal species.

"There are a lot of invasive plant species research and control efforts going on," said biologist Stan Stewart. To that effect, Alabama has its own Invasive Plant Species Council, but none to study animals.

The expansion of the armadillo, once unthinkable in the Shoals, gives a potential case history of what might happen with alligators.

The limiting factors for alligators proliferating in north Alabama are the dam barriers and, more importantly, the cold winters, Hudson said.

In the winter, alligators must learn to survive temperatures by finding underwater caves or burrow in the banks where it may be 50 to 60 degrees year round even as temperatures outside dip below freezing, Hudson said.

But gators, such as the one in Danville, lurk about and become exposed to humans from time to time, Hudson said.

Gators have been found at industrial discharge canals in Colbert County, the warmer waters attracting the cold-blooded animals.

An alligator reportedly was caught in 2007 in Elk River in western Lauderdale County.

"It's very possible and likely that people keep gators, catch one and then turn them loose," Hudson said.

The Alligator mississippiensis, which is the scientific name for the American alligator, was once considered a foregone conclusion, an expected extinction after decades of overhunting and lost habitat.

In 1967, the alligator became classified as endangered, reinforced with the passage of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which prohibited alligator hunting, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services.

In 1987, 20 years after making the endangered list, the American alligator had recovered and the species was removed from the endangered list by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Since alligators resemble declining species such as crocodiles and caimans, however, they have remained classified as "threatened due to similarity of appearance."

Alligator populations in southern Alabama have rebounded so much that in 2006 the state reintroduced an abbreviated gator-hunting season.

In 2007, the season was expanded, and out of 140 hunting permits issued, 96 gators were harvested, compared to 197 animals removed for control purposes, Stewart said.

Of those removed, only one or two came from north Alabama.

Hudson, when asked to speculate about the alligator's range said, "It is inevitable that sooner or later they will be valleywide."

He added that the freak-out factor for a public that hasn't had to live with them shouldn't cause concern.

"I hope people would appreciate them and enjoy them," Hudson said.

For example, in south Alabama, people water ski in waters with alligators, he said.

"It's not like we won't be able to use our water here because of alligators," Hudson said.

His advice: If you don't bother them, they won't bother you.

"They've been here for 30 years now and people still don't know they're here."

Trevor Stokes can be reached at 740-5728 or trevor.stokes@TimesDaily.com.