{"id":38918,"date":"2023-11-15T12:10:31","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T17:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=38918"},"modified":"2023-11-15T12:10:37","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T17:10:37","slug":"alligator-activity-is-closing-a-popular-trail-at-circle-b-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/11\/15\/alligator-activity-is-closing-a-popular-trail-at-circle-b-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Alligator activity is closing a popular trail at Circle B again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alligator Alley, or at least a portion of it, again belongs to the alligators alone.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Recent visitors to Circle B Bar Reserve, Polk County\u2019s most popular natural property, have found metal gates blocking a stretch of the Alligator Alley trail. In addition, yellow signs have popped up offering such warnings as \u201cAlligators may be on trails.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The temporary closure occurred on Nov. 7, the same day that a Facebook post showed a large alligator slumped across a different trail as a group of photographers stood near it, snapping photos. The woman who captured the image and shared the post wrote, \u201cBruce was on the loose. (And those people ended up poking him with a palm frond to get him to move)\u201d \u2014 followed by three angry-face emojis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is no direct connection between that incident and the partial closure of Alligator Alley, a manager of the property said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polk County Parks and Natural Resources, which manages Circle B, periodically closes trails out of concern for alligator activity, most commonly during the late spring and summer, when the animals are most actively mating. The 1,267-acre restored wetlands borders Lake Hancock, which teems with alligators, and contains a network of marshes also inhabited by the toothy reptiles.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Alligators move between wet areas throughout the reserve, sometimes crossing trails used by hikers, birdwatchers and bicyclists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The portion of Alligator Alley now closed runs from the turn along Lake Hancock to the crossing with Heron Hideout, one of the most secluded and scenic trail sections in the reserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tabitha Biehl, Polk County\u2019s Land and Water Natural Areas manager, said her department opted for the temporary closure based on an increase in reports of alligators crossing the trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had a situation where we just felt that, due to the number of calls that were coming in, that we needed to protect that section of trail where the alligators were at still \u2026 by blocking it off for a short while until the weather warms back up,\u201d Biehl said. \u201cWe\u2019ve done this before, where we have to close for a week or two and then open back up just because of where the alligators are at with their young, and the cold weather and all those kinds of things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biehl said her staff received reports of multiple daily alligator crawls over that section of the trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe’ve been watching it very closely for a couple of weeks, and we just needed to take a pause and block a small section off to protect the resident alligators and visitors at the same time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biehl said she could not predict how long the segment of Alligator Alley will be closed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alligator Alley, or at least a portion of it, again belongs to the alligators alone. Recent visitors to Circle B Bar Reserve, Polk County\u2019s most popular natural property, have found… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}