The above video is our WITN+ livestream and may not reflect the content in this story.<\/p>\n
RALEIGH, N.C. (WITN) – Our scaly neighbors are on the hunt for a mate, and state officials advise the people of ENC on how to co-exist with them.<\/p>\n
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission is advising residents to be GatorWise as the alligator mating season is underway.<\/p>\n
According to the officials, alligator mating season is in spring and summer and often sees an uptick in human encounters. The public is advised not to feed or interact with these animals.<\/p>\n
District Biologist John Harrelson says a dangerous consequence of feeding alligators is that they become less afraid of approaching humans. It is a violation of state law to feed alligators.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople feeding alligators ultimately leads to those animals seeing humans as a potential source for food,\u201d said Harrelson. \u201cNaturally, alligators are shy, but through feeding, alligators can lose their fear of humans, and that leads to a possible negative interaction between people and wildlife.\u201d<\/p>\n
GatorWise is a partnership between the NCWRC and 10 other state wildlife commissions where alligators live, promoting resources on how to co-exist with these animals properly.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WITN. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The above video is our WITN+ livestream and may not reflect the content in this story. RALEIGH, N.C.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":826329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[27],"tags":[14879,323149,19077,339316,56544,27167,339314,339313,279750,67020,339312,253101,65823,17878,116372,519,339315,18373,159,5950,14880,290,205165,1176,67,132,68,837,212751,36907],"class_list":["post-826328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-alligator","tag-alligator-mating-season","tag-alligator-sighting","tag-alligator-sightings","tag-alligators","tag-commission","tag-eastern-carolina","tag-eastern-north-carolina","tag-enc","tag-gator","tag-gatorwise","tag-mating","tag-mating-season","tag-nc","tag-ncwrc","tag-north-carolina","tag-north-carolina-wildlife-resources-commission","tag-officials","tag-science","tag-season","tag-sightings","tag-state","tag-state-officials","tag-summer","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wildlife","tag-wildlife-resources-commission","tag-witn"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}