NEW ORLEANS — Here comes another in a long and raggedy line of scamps and scalawags, pirates and privateers who have profited in Louisiana while the state suffered.
This latest invader is straining Louisiana's traditional tolerance of scoundrels. He's an outsider who's made himself right at home; his gluttony is laying waste to the southern half of the state, and his self-serving agenda is changing the shape of the border.
Previous troublemakers have been called dirty rats or even weasels. This new marauder is, in fact, a member of the rodent family. He's a nutria: a nearsighted, rat-like South American import who for 50 unimpeded years has been reproducing wildly and flourishing in the Louisiana wetlands, all the while eating all the vegetation he could get past his pronounced overbite.
Nutria--several million of them, officials estimate--are destroying the coastal wetlands that are crucial to Louisiana's water-control efforts, vital to the fishing and trapping industries and home to scores of protected species. Environmental and wildlife experts have for decades been stumped at how to rid the swamps and bayous of this damaging creature, whose rampant feeding threatens to destroy an all-important buffer zone for hurricanes sweeping in from the Gulf of Mexico.
Now the state is striking back. Officials with the Wildlife and Fisheries Department have launched a five-year program aimed at downsizing the nutria population and reclaiming denuded wetlands by tapping into what people in Louisiana do exceedingly well: eat.
Officials have recruited the state's top chefs to create dishes to entice citizens to devour nutria. They have an abiding faith that they can saute, braise and fricassee their way out of this crisis.
"We've tried other approaches and they haven't worked," said Noel Kinler, project manager of the state's nutria project. "We don't have much choice at this point."
So far it's been a tough sell. People here may be famous for their adventurous eating habits, but they appear to have drawn the nutritional line at nutria. Call it what you want, it still looks just like a rat.
Brought In by Tabasco Creator
Spud doesn't give the impression of being an ecological terrorist. The 6-month-old orphan has been hand-raised at the Louisiana Nature Center here and is roughhousing with his handler, Lisa Spardel. Ungainly on land and ill-designed for walking, Spud waddles around the office of the center's director unchecked, happily chewing on phone cords and computer connections. He makes a break for an open door, but his myopia drives him headfirst into a wall.
Bob Mayre, whose office is being littered with Spud's pellet-like calling cards, is tolerant of his little guest. Spud is a typical young nutria: with sleek brown-black fur, sloped head, tiny ears, beady eyes, scaly rattail and the trademark elongated orange incisors, parted in the middle.
At this age, it's possible to consider him cute. Mayre says his daughters have swaddled young nutria in blankets and played with them like dolls.
As Mayre, a biologist, tells the story, nutria, Myocastor coypus, were brought to Louisiana after 4 million years of living in South America. In 1937, Edward A. McIlhenny, a naturalist and creator of Tabasco hot sauce, brought 13 nutria home with the intention of breeding them for their fur.
The animals did well in pens, and a few years later McIlhenny released about 100 into the marshes around Avery Island, thinking he would hunt them as he wished.
That first group went forth into the vast Atchafalaya Basin and thrived in an environment that has hardly any competitors or predators. They began to treat the Mississippi Delta as their personal salad bar.
The environmental problem grew out of the ruthlessness of the nutria's eating habit. It feeds by paddling around a heavily vegetated marsh and seeks out the tender roots of aquatic plants, chewing its way up to the leaves, which it ignores. Biologists call the damaged sections "eat outs."
"The rule of thumb is they eat only 10% of what they destroy," said zoologist Bob Thomas, a professor at Loyola University here. "Ninety percent of the plant floats away."
Replanting has been tried on a limited basis, with little success. Nutria follow behind, gorging on the tender shoots of the new plants. Even when they aren't eating, nutria burrow into levees, causing them to collapse.
They are strong swimmers. Adults grow to about the size of a small beaver, propelling themselves with webbed back feet and steering with their rope-like tail. Their vegetarian diet provides little fuel, so nutrias must eat constantly.
When they aren't eating, they have one other major interest. Nutria's mating habits make rabbits seem standoffish. They begin breeding at six months and have three litters a year, with up to 13 pups in each litter.
