A Georgia homeowner was in for a shock when she found a 3-foot reptile living under her house, wildlife officials say. A woman living in Athens discovered there was an Argentine black and white tegu staked out under her porch in September, according to an Oct. 31 Georgia Department of Natural Resources news release. Now […]
Tag: american alligator
Study shows alligators are the engineers of the wetlands
Alligators radically change the ecosystem around them to make the best of seasonal changes in water levels—and that’s a good thing for wetlands. A new study recently published in the Journal of Animal Ecology shows alligators do more than just care for themselves when they create alligator ponds. They create a habitat for other organisms […]
Wild Florida: White-tail deer were nearly hunted to extinction
White-tailed deer are an integral part of Myakka’s ecosystems. But by the 1930s, unregulated hunting practically eliminated deer from Sarasota County. In fact, when Myakka River State Park was established in 1941, to protect the Myakka River valley from development, many species of wildlife, including deer, had been hunted to near extinction. To restore deer, […]
‘Don’t let your cat outside’: Q&A with author Peter Christie
The statistics capturing the effects that pets have on wildlife are mind-boggling. Cats in the United States alone kill at least 1.3 billion birds and up to 22.3 billion small mammals a year, according to a 2013 study in the journal Nature Communications. Cats and dogs “are now the most abundant carnivores on the planet,” […]
Florida Opened a Fake Alligator Farm to Catch Poachers
ARCADIA, FLORIDA – On a moonless night in mid-October, Wayne Nichols, 42, lit a cigarette and climbed up to the captain’s seat of a splatter-painted skiff. He eased the boat into the middle of a nameless canal somewhere between Sebring and Lake Placid, in south-central Florida. His clients, Pat Hopkins, 66, and her son Melvin […]
Python hunters to tackle Florida’s unwelcome intruder
Bill Booth struggles to recall the last time he saw a raccoon, a fox or a rabbit on one of his frequent hunting excursions deep into the swamps of the Florida Everglades. An outdoorsman all his life, he knows as well as anyone how the native wildlife once abundant across the vast wilderness has been […]
Human activity ‘driving half of world’s crocodile species to extinction’
As many as half of the world’s 27 species of crocodilian face being wiped out due to human activity, although the most feared variety, the saltwater crocodile, faces a brighter future, according to a new book by a veteran crocodile researcher. Land use changes, pollution, culling and feral animal invasions mean that many crocodile species […]
Crocodiles, Alligators Hunt in Groups, Scientist Says
Studying predatory behavior by crocodiles, alligators and caimans in the wild is notoriously difficult because they are ambush hunters, have slow metabolisms and eat much less frequently than warm-blooded animals. In addition, they are mostly nocturnal and often hunt in murky, overgrown waters of remote tropical rivers and swamps. Accidental observations of their hunting behavior […]