ORANGE LEADER (Texas) 24 August 03 Poachers target alligator population (Margaret Toal)
The Nature Classroom boat trip on Adams Bayou is a highlight for school children in Orange County, especially when they see an alligator sunning on a bank or a log.
Next week when trips start, there won't be any alligators. Poachers have shot them.
Michael Hoke, founder of the Nature Classroom and director of Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center along the bayou, discovered three alligator carcasses this past week.
"We're letting a few non-caring individuals, poachers, threaten our ability to develop a beautiful resource for everyone in Orange," he said.
It's not the first time poachers have gotten to the gaiters. Sometimes the gator bodies are found skinned. Sometimes their tales have been cut off for meat. Other times a gator body ends up floating intact.
Hoke said poachers will shoot the alligators at night and then lose the body. Later it floats.
In recent months, Hoke has counted seven alligators between the Nature Classroom launch at Lions City Park and the Nature Classroom study area off Park Avenue by Sunset Grove Country Club.
The past few days, Hoke hasn't been able to find any of the gators alive.
Saturday morning the bayou area was green and colorful. Bushes of wild tiny white and yellow asters bloomed in crevices of logs and cypress trees. White spider swamp lilies bloomed along the shore.
Great blue herons with five-foot wing spans flapped across the water surface. Smaller green herons glided along the shores. White egrets, with four-and-a-half-foot wing spans swooped from tree to tree. Small kingfishers with blue-gray and white feathers and a red band across their neck caught tiny shad swimming in schools.
And a four-foot alligator carcass, bloated and smelling, floated belly-up along the shore. Hoke said it had a bullet hole in its head. Not far away an 18-inch alligator carcass bobbled on waves from the wake of Hook's boat.
"That's the one I've raised since a pup," Hoke said.
He had gotten the alligator as a baby and kept it in one of the study ponds on the island by the Park Avenue bridge.
The alligators are much more important than something interesting to show students and tourists.
"It's the keystone species keeping this whole ecosystem from being destroyed by a few species," he said.
Shangri La has a pond off the bayou with a large heronry, a place where a variety of birds, mainly large water birds, nest and roost at night.
Besides the different egrets and herons, Shangri La has 115 roseate spoonbills, a rare, large pink bird. There are also cormorants, anhingas and ibises.
Hoke said raccoons and bobcats eat the birds and the eggs. But alligators eat those animals, helping to keep the bird population alive.
Also alligators keep the nutria from invading, Hoke said. Nutria are a like a giant rat with huge teeth and originate from South America. They were introduced along the gulf coast and can eat and destroy vegetation.
"We need the alligators here," Hoke said.
He's hoping people can help stop poachers along the bayou. Alligators thirty years ago were an endangered species. Though hunting is now allowed, hunters must have special licenses or permits.
Alligator poachers hunt at night by shining flashlights along the shores. The eyes of the gators reflect back and the poachers shoot at the eyes. Hoke said sometimes the poachers lose a dead alligator in the dark and aren't able to get the skin or tail.
Anyone seeing a poacher at night should contact the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game wardens through the Orange County Sheriff's Office at 883-2612.
Poachers target alligator population