Two headless gators appear in North Naples canal

Two dead, headless gators were found rotting in a canal and getting picked apart by vultures by a busy road in North Naples.

It was a shocking discovery, said Greg Krivac, who lives nearby.

Experts say it looks like animal cruelty or poaching.

“We don’t really have that kind of activity around here,” Krivac said. “People lined up looking and taking pictures. I’ve had family members that live in the neighborhood calling, asking me why there’s 50 buzzards in the yard and flying overhead.”

The gator carcasses were found right in front of the Fairways Inn of Naples.

“It breaks my heart that I don’t see the wildlife that I used to growing up here so to see this is just awful because we used to count gators going down the street as kids and now you never see them so when you get to see them you want to see them alive and enjoying the waters, fishing not without their heads and their skin,” said Maria Styles, a manager at the inn.

The South Florida Water Management District pulled one of the gators out on Monday. The other is nowhere to be found.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission did not say if there is an active investigation, but they said they responded and documented the incident.

Neighbors still want to know what happened.

“This sort of of mutilation is just completely shocking to see, alligators are fundamental to Florida,” said Meredith Budd, regional policy director of Florida Wildlife Federation.

Budd said the mutilation looks like the work of humans. And although it is gator hunting season, decapitation is never allowed.

“It clearly looks like animal cruelty,” Budd said. “And clearly here, you can see that their heads were removed. That’s not a natural cause of death.”

The Fairways Inn of Naples is offering a $1,000 reward for any information on the culprit.