American Alligator

This is a conservation story that ended well. Hunting and wetland damage had pushed the American alligator to dangerously low numbers by the mid-1900s. Alabama banned hunting in 1938, the federal government listed the species as endangered in 1967, and the Endangered Species Act carried that status forward in 1973. Protection worked: the Fish and Wildlife Service removed the alligator from the endangered list in 1987. Louisiana now has more alligators than any other state, and the animals earn their keep by eating nutria, an invasive rodent that damages coastal marsh.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — steps away
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Vermilionville — 5.8 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 6.5 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 7.0 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• Wetlands — steps away
• Lake Martin — steps away
• The Pellerin-Chauffe House — 3.9 mi
• Welcome to Parks — 4.3 mi