CITIZEN-TIMES (Asheville, N Carolina) 28 July 06 Is that an alligator in the river? Reptile is raising eyebrows on the French Broad (Adam Behsudi)
Brevard: Jim Reynolds had heard about the alligator sightings along the French Broad River, so for his canoe trip he took along a camera just in case.
Now the Brevard College associate geology professor has the proof — a couple of snapshots of a 3-foot-long alligator gliding toward a riverbank somewhere near Brevard.
Or maybe not exactly an alligator.
Others have seen the creature that plies that section of the French Broad, among them Sid Cullipher, owner of Headwater Outfitters. Cullipher said he thinks it is a caiman, a close cousin of the alligator native to South America.
“It really to me does not look like a baby alligator,” he said. “The coloring is much more like a caiman people get for pets.”
Reynolds took his pictures Wednesday. On Thursday, Cullipher gave those to the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources to see if it could make a determination.
Reynolds said he saw the creature while canoeing the final few miles of a 20-mile trip from Rosman to Brevard. He puts the location as being somewhere between Barclay Bridge and Hap Simpson Park, and figures it must have been someone’s pet.
“Somebody could have dumped an alligator in the river,” he said. “I just suspected it just got a little too big.”
Alligators live in North Carolina, but only in the wetlands and swamps of the eastern coastal region.
The state usually is the northern limit of the animal’s natural habitat, said Jennifer Frick-Ruppert, associate professor of ecology and environmental studies at Brevard College.
“I would say the only reason there is an alligator up here is that somebody released it,” she said. “I doubt it will survive the winter here; they’re really adapted to warm weather conditions.”
Frick-Ruppert looked at the creature in Reynolds’ photos and said she thought it is an alligator, and a young one because of its bright yellow and black markings.
The size of an alligator is not necessarily related to its age, but one 3 feet long could be 3 to 4 years old, said Art Hulse, a retired herpetologist and former biology professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania now living in Asheville.
People abandoning pet alligators when they get too big is a common problem, said David Dawe, owner of Sweetwater Creek Alligator Farm in Fountain, Fla.
“This is kind of becoming a nationwide issue that people are taking on animals they can’t maintain,” said Dawe, who travels around his area educating groups of children with his two alligators.
“To be up in the mountains, it’s guaranteed that alligator was deposited in the river,” he said.
Is that an alligator in the river?