Wildlife experts in the Lowcountry have an old adage for people who feed alligators “a fed gator is a dead gator.”
Simply, alligators who get fed by people are more likely to attack than those that kill what they catch. To prevent any future gator attacks, wildlife experts need to euthanize a fed or nuisance alligator.
One expert has a simple way to quickly determine the demeanor of the gator in front of him.
As the owner of K&K Wildlife Services, when Matt Kraycar receives calls about possible rogue alligators, he can tell if it’s a little too comfortable around humans. His method is straightforward: if he walks towards the alligator and it quickly hauls itself into the water, the gator, Kraycar and the public are at lower risk of being attacked.
But when Kraycar approaches the water’s edge and the gator sits and stares at him, “it kind of just stands there like it’s waiting to get something,” Kraycar said. Those are the creatures that need to be removed and euthanized.
Those are the reptiles that have lost their fear of humans because somebody has been feeding them.
As temperatures warm into spring, local alligators are emerging from a period of low activity during the cooler, winter months and preparing to breed in April. This change in activity levels also coincides with more citations for feeding alligators, as well as the euthanizations that often follow.
Feeding alligators is a crime
Feeding alligators is a crime in the state of South Carolina. Doing so without a permit carries a misdemeanor charge. Any violations of the law could result in a fine of up to $200 and a jail sentence of up to 30 days.
From 2020 though 2024, the state’s department of natural resources has issued 37 charges related to unlawfully feeding, possessing or capturing alligators in Beaufort and Jasper Counties. Most of the violations occur during the spring and summer months when alligators are at their most active.
How do gators see us?
Alligators are naturally skittish around humans. The ancient reptile doesn’t typically register people as prey, instead as a possible predator that strangely moves along on two feet, Morgan Hart, the alligator project leader for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said. This behavior changes when alligators start to associate people with food.
“Unfortunately for alligators, they learn very quickly,” Hart said. “You can reinforce good or bad behavior very quickly, just like training a dog.”
When people feed alligators, they learn to associate what they previously thought was this strange predator with food. Some people may intentionally feed alligators, throwing fish and bait into the water near the reptile. The result is the same, Hart said. Instead of fleeing, they’ll instead approach people when they walk nearby.
Beaufort County has seen seven alligator attacks since 2018. While the DNR investigates any contributors to the attacks, they haven’t found evidence of feeding in any of those cases, though it’s still a possibility, Hart said.
After an alligator learns to associate people with food, they can no longer exist safely in a community and need to be euthanized. Private property owners and municipalities call contractors licensed by the DNR to catch and remove the alligator. After the contractor removes the alligator, they have to kill the captured alligator by shooting it in the back of its head.
Because alligators have a strong homing instinct, they can’t be relocated. If they move to another area, they’ll likely become a nuisance there as well, be killed by other alligators or try and make the journey home.
Education and citations
In order to issue a citation for feeding or mistreating alligators, a witness needs to identify the person responsible for the incident or the feeding needs to be caught on video, Hart said.
Kraycar finds that many nuisance alligators occur near short term rentals or construction sites. In those situations, any video’s of people feeding the gator aren’t helpful since the offenders are often gone by the time law enforcement becomes aware of the situation.
Often the people who feed the alligators don’t do so maliciously, they simply think it’s cute and don’t understand the ramifications, Hart said.
The first line of defense for preventing an alligator from becoming a nuisance is education, Hart said. The DNR does a number of presentations each year that teach residents to behave around alligators, identify nuisance alligator behavior and, most importantly, not feed alligators.
“So a lot of what we do is human education, trying to change human behavior around wild animals that deserve respect and to live in places where they’ve been for millions of years,” Hart said.