Here's a website with pictures gators from around Bama. Madison is the gators near my place that we'd go see and catch their babies. Also the ones i posted pics of on vle.
http://www.alabamaherps.com/alligators/ ... gator.htmlHere's a newspaper article
Decatur is the main city in Morgan County right below Limestone and Madison.
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."
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