Nutria may threaten Hampton Roads wetlands

VIRGINIA

Once a valuable source of income for trappers, the nutria has become an evasive pest known for damaging acres of wildlife areas and personal property over the past few decades.

Also known as a coypu or river rat, the beaver-like critter has become such a nuisance in some parts of the country that game agencies have given organized hunting parties unlimited permission to kill them.

Here in the mid-Atlantic, trappers who sold the animal's pelts in Europe did a pretty good job of keeping them in check.

But now that their pelts are of little value, nutria are making a comeback.

And that's not a good thing.

Nutria were introduced to the Chesapeake Bay region in the 1940s and are believed to have destroyed 7,000 to 8,000 acres of marshland in one Maryland wildlife refuge alone.

In the 1960s and '70s, they appeared in big numbers in Back Bay and surrounding marshlands.

They destroy wetlands by eating the stalks of native plants, leaving vast areas prone to erosion. In Back Bay, they were severely damaging dikes that kept some marshlands flooded for waterfowl.

The Back Bay Restoration Foundation is currently conducting a program to report as many sightings of nutria as possible in an effort to determine if the population once again is out of hand.

"This is just the first phase to try and get an idea of numbers," said David Bishop, a regional invasive species biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We'll go from there and see if we need to just monitor the population or start control."

Bishop said the program will partner with North Carolina because Back Bay's waters and marshlands blend into those of the Currituck Sound.

He said that millions of dollars funded by Congress so far have been spent on a nutria control program throughout the Chesapeake Bay. The effort mostly is concentrated in Maryland.

"They have experienced huge eat-out areas where nutria have eaten entire marshes and destroyed them," Bishop said. "We don't have a problem anywhere near that, and we don't want one.

It's horrible and it takes years, if at all, for areas to regrow."

Louisiana's problems were so bad that, in 2005, the state put a bounty on the animal that resulted in large nighttime "kill parties" that roamed canal and marsh systems with night-vision goggles and high-powered rifles.

Nutria resemble an extremely large rat or a small beaver with a rat-like tail. They can grow to about 20 pounds, but typically are closer to 10. They have coarse, darkish-brown hair and a white patch on the muzzle.

Bishop is asking that sightings in the Back Bay area be reported by going to www.cmiweb.org/nutria, or by emailing him at David_Bishop@fws.gov.