Rancher casts doubt that Gabby Petito's boyfriend is in nature reserve as ...

An experienced rancher has cast doubt that Gabby Petito's boyfriend is in an alligator infested nature reserve where authorities have been searching.

The comments came as North Port Police announced that the search for Brain Laundrie would be scaled back in the coming days.

Florida cattle rancher Alan McEwen, who lives outside the Carlton Reserve, has spent 30 years exploring the area and said it's not somewhere humans can easily live.

'There's no surviving out here, I don't know how to say it,' he told Fox News. 

McEwen has been assisting police in the search for 23-year-old Laundrie, who was reported missing by his parents on September 17 - two days after he was declared a person of interest in Petito's disappearance. 

The couple had spent weeks travelling across the country in a van and recording their adventures online before Petito vanished. Her remains were found inside a Wyoming national park on September 19.

Laundrie's parents suggested he might have headed to the nature reserve, which he was known to visit and which is about 15 miles from his home.

Whether the avid hiker would have been able to survive in the 25,000-acre swamp-like reserve for weeks has been the subject of much speculation.  

'I've been in the woods in and out all my life… I have learned a lot in my life, and one thing I know is no one is gonna survive out there for two weeks on foot,' McEwen told Fox.

In the nearly two weeks since Laundrie is thought to have entered the reserve, heavy rainfall has flooded the area with waist-deep water.   

'Unless he's got a butt like a duck and can float, he's not in there,' McEwen said.

The rancher also noted the dangers posed by alligators, mosquitos and other animals in the

read more from dailymail.....