A 7.5-foot alligator that regularly turned up near the walking trail at Marconi Drive and Allen Toussaint Boulevard in New Orleans City Park has been captured by Louisiana wildlife officials, who confirmed the catch after a resident's video showed the animal eating food left out for it near the path. Officials say they are now searching for a second, larger alligator believed to be in the same area of the park.
The video, shared by resident Lisa Plaia on August 27, shows the alligator approaching a plate of food set near the trail and eating an unidentified item from it, according to WDSU. Plaia told the station she was concerned about the alligator's proximity to the walking path and worried for residents who walk their pets nearby. In her post, she warned that feeding alligators endangers pets, people, and the alligators themselves, and noted that alligators which approach humans are often euthanized because they become a community hazard.
Feeding alligators is illegal in City Park, and Plaia's post directed residents to report anyone feeding or baiting alligators to City Park Police at 504-421-9307. WDSU reached out to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries about the alligator and the feeding concerns, but the agency had not responded by the time of publication.
Why a Fed Gator Often Ends Up Euthanized
The paradox at the center of this incident is a grim one: well-meaning or careless visitors who toss food to an alligator are often setting it up to be killed. Louisiana state law does not explicitly outlaw feeding wild alligators, though the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries strongly cautions against it because the practice strips an alligator of its natural fear of people, according to the Louisiana Radio Network. City Park's own rules go further, explicitly prohibiting visitors from feeding any wildlife on park grounds, per New Orleans City Park.
Under Louisiana's Nuisance Alligator Program, state-permitted trappers remove more than 1,000 nuisance alligators every year, and habituated or large gators are generally euthanized rather than relocated, since moving them simply shifts a known danger to a new location, LSU Reveille reports. That same outlet notes the precedent set in July 2020, when LDWF agents and a licensed trapper captured and euthanized a 10-foot, 300-pound alligator found roaming a residential street in Lakeview, just next to City Park — a decision that sparked intense local debate over the state's euthanasia rules versus relocation efforts.
How Park Officials Decide When to Call Trappers
City Park's operational protocol treats alligator sightings differently depending on where in the 1,300-acre park they occur. Any alligator spotted in lagoons south of Interstate 610 — where foot traffic is heaviest and major attractions like the New Orleans Museum of Art draw crowds — triggers an immediate call to wildlife trappers regardless of the animal's size, according to WWL-TV. North of I-610, trappers are only summoned for alligators larger than five feet. The park, roughly 50 percent larger than New York's Central Park, contains an interconnected network of freshwater lakes, lagoons, and bayous that form natural alligator habitat in the middle of the city, per Wikipedia.
The timing of this sighting is notable. Late August marks hatching season for wild alligators in Louisiana, a period when mother gators become more aggressive about defending nests built near shorelines and are more likely to confront perceived threats on land near footpaths, according to a discussion on Reddit's r/NewOrleans. Eggs laid in June typically hatch in late August, driving heightened nest-defense behavior in females during exactly this window.
A Booming Statewide Population
Louisiana's wild alligator population has recovered dramatically since a harvest moratorium ran from 1962 to 1972, growing from under 100,000 animals in the 1960s to more than 3 million in 2026 — the largest wild alligator population of any U.S. state, alongside nearly 1 million more on commercial farms, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Alligators were removed from the federal endangered species list in 1987. In May 2025, LDWF partnered with ten Southeastern states to launch GatorWise.org, an educational campaign aimed at helping residents coexist safely with alligators and avoid habituating them with food scraps, the Louisiana Radio Network reported.
That booming population means encounters near walking trails, canals, and neighborhoods have become increasingly common across the region. Hoodline reported an alligator dragged a leashed dog into Lake Pontchartrain near Kenner's Gabriel Pumping Station on August 9, prompting police alerts warning dog owners to keep pets away from the water's edge. Similar incidents have surfaced in nearby Metairie's drainage canals and on flooded streets west of the city, underscoring how routine alligator sightings have become across the New Orleans area even as officials continue urging residents not to feed them.
