A two-decade, multimillion dollar effort got rid of nutria, a pesky rodent, on the eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay. But there's worry they could come back.
They look like scruffy, oversize rats armed with large, beaver-like orange teeth and flat noses. They’re called nutria, and they’ve ravaged thousands of acres of marshland on the Delmarva Peninsula that stretches along the coasts of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.But after a two-decade-long, $30 million effort to trap and kill the invasive species, wildlife experts have claimed victory in eradicating it from shores along the eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay.
At one point, experts said, there may have been some economic benefit to nutria in the Mid-Atlantic, but because they’re not native to the area, they caused too much environmental damage. Nutria severely damaged marshlands along the Delmarva Peninsula, which are important habitats for waterfowl, spawning grounds for striped bass and blue crab, and breeding areas for at-risk or endangered species including the salt marsh sparrow and the black rail.Originally from South America, nutria were introduced into the Delmarva area in the 1940s and were bred for their fur and meat. They’re also problematic in parts of North Carolina and Louisiana.
“They’re very gregarious, so they’ll seek out one another in low populations,” Michaels said. They caught some nutria alive, spayed and neutered them, then outfitted them with GPS tracking collars.“They did exactly what we were hoping they would do,” Michaels said. “They led us to smaller populations that we had missed.”By 2015, wildlife biologists said the last known nutria in the Delmarva area was captured and killed.
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