Gators Gone - Where They're Usually Plentiful, Few Remain After Hurricane Ike

Anahuac, Texas - In this town on the edge of the Trinity Bay, alligators normally outnumber people three to one, and the annual Texas GatorFest draws 30,000 people - more than 10 times the town's population.

But not this year, not with Hurricane Ike. The storm forced the cancellation of the festival and made the gator hunting season a shadow of its normal self.

Wildlife officials say the gators' habitat and food sources also took a significant hit and it may take time for the population to recover.

But the official "Alligator Capital of Texas" will rise again, Mayor Guy Robert Jackson vows.

The annual GatorFest - complete with a pageant for GatorFest Queen - brings in half a million dollars. It would have been on the same weekend as Ike hit.

The Sept. 13 storm slammed ashore near Galveston with a 12-foot to 15-foot storm surge along the upper Texas Gulf Coast and its dozens of swampy waterways.

Because alligators require fresh water to survive, the rush of salt water sent them scurrying farther inland and made many of them ill, sometimes fatally so.

"Alligators are amazing - very tough. But they've been dislocated, on the move, with no food available, and fresh water is hard to find," said Tim Cooper of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In Anahuac, about 50 miles east of Houston, mobile homes were crumpled, bricks were ripped from homes and hunting lodges were in shambles. The roof of the alligator-themed souvenir store was torn off.

In the wake of the storm, alligators scrambled out of the now-salty marshes where they like to hide. They're hungry, but with fewer meal options: many fish died in the storm, and experts say the alligators are getting as stressed out as hurricane-battered humans.

"This has upset the food chain, and predators at the pinnacle of that are going to struggle," said Cooper, a project leader at the 34,000-acre Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge.

While Texas wildlife officials have not tallied alligator deaths since Ike, they plan to do a survey in a few months and also monitor the egg-laying season, which starts in June, said Monique Slaughter, a natural resource specialist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's alligator program.

"There will be some effects from Ike, and if necessary we'll make those adjustments with the (hunting) season," Slaughter said.

The situation seems to be quite similar to the situation in Lousiane after hurricane Katrina - and indeed, the number of wild alligators has decreased.
The destruction of habitats due to saline flooding of freshwater marshes and lakes might be significant for many years - and not only gators are affected.