Thread: Fishing Buddy

Like the beaver the alligator has no natural preditor to control the population. Congratulations in a few years you will have the largest population of alligators in North Central Alabama and still have beavers.

Originally Posted by Skippa Chippa

Like the beaver the alligator has no natural preditor to control the population. Congratulations in a few years you will have the largest population of alligators in North Central Alabama and still have beavers.

They have tons of natural predators, but it's the babies and eggs that are predated upon. It still works the same way though. Everything in nature has natural predators, or the ecosystem would crash. But, like someone else mentioned, here in N. AL we're probably at the edge of their natural range anyway. It's very difficult for the young to make to to adulthood.

I've heard all the stories about them being stocked to control the beavers too, but the real reason was that the American Alligator was on the brink of extinction back in the 60's and 70's and biologists were looking for ways to save them. So, they were stocked into the backwaters of wheeler (in the 70's, I think) to have kind of a reserve of them in case populations continued to declined elsewhere.

I see them pretty often in the area where that photo was taken. I know I've seen at least 3 different ones in there. Here's a couple of photos of ones I've seen.