Do Not Feed Alligators
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife
Ongoing residential develop in and near coastal and marsh areas in Texas, is the primary reason why human / alligator interactions are on the rise.
Amos Cooper, a Natural Resource Specialist at J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area in Port Arthur – which is prime alligator habitat – says if you live in gator country, you need to remember this important rule:
Never ever feed one, because you stimulate him to look at humans as a food source. And that’s the potential danger we’re being impacted with right now in places around the Houston/Fort Bend area.
We’re getting a lot of new people here moving into Texas who have never seen an alligator. The problem is people start feeding them. ‘Come here, I want to show you my alligator!’ Throw bread out there, showing their neighbors and stuff like that. And they make that animal real aggressive, and then they call us.
And then half of them, because they raised this alligator and they fed it everyday, they don’t want us to kill it not understand that that’s our only choice… because what are we going to do? We’re going to release it somewhere so somebody else can get injured from it? Because it’s going to attack you because it’s been stimulated with food.
Texas Parks and Wildlife has developed educational materials for the public about the dangers and consequences surrounding the feeding of alligators.
And you can find a link to that information at passporttotexas.org.
That’s our show for today…with research and writing help from Loren Seeger…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti
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