Alligators live here, too

Breeding season’s over, nesting time now

Van Zandt County may be hundreds of miles away from the nearest swampy bayou but that doesn’t mean alligators don’t live here.

“There are alligators all over Van Zandt County,” Game Warden Daylon Damron said. “I’ve only been here about a year but I’ve heard stories of 12-foot alligator sightings.”

According to information from the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department, “the American alligator was once very common in rivers, creeks, and backwater sloughs of East and South Texas. Unregulated market hunting and habitat alteration resulted in near extirpation of the species in Texas by the 1950s. Legal protection, enhanced habitat conditions and new water impoundment projects have resulted in a rapid repopulation of Texas by alligators during the past 20 years. To complicate matters, an ever-expanding human population continues to encroach upon the alligator's domain. These factors contribute to increased encounters between alligators and people.

“What is needed is a better-educated populace more able to recognize the few nuisance alligators and to coexist safely with the majority of alligators that are not nuisances. Most Texans in ‘gator country’ will live in close proximity to these native reptiles with no confrontations.”

Most of the time, if you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone, Damron said.

“Generally alligators are not aggressive,” he said, “except during breeding season.”

Breeding season for Texas alligators runs from May to June. “During courtship, male alligators can be very aggressive toward other males or toward humans,” TPW material states. “Mated pairs are frequently seen swimming or sunning together by mid-May; the male is the larger of the two. By the end of June, the pair separates and the female assumes her exclusive duties of nest building and guarding.”

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