Miranda, supervisor of the Chesapeake Bay Field Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is working to eradicate nutria, a nonnative species of large rodents that weigh 25 to 30 pounds and threaten the Bay. What’s their presence in the Chesapeake area like? What are they doing?
Back in the 1920s and ’30s, they were brought in for the fur industry, and a small colony was established near what is now the Blackwater National Wildlife refuge. That industry never took off, and eventually they were released into the environment. … They actually go and eat the roots of the marsh vegetation, all the cattails and marsh ecosystem vegetation. They dig a hole by doing that, and that exacerbates the sea level rising because you increase erosion. … Right now we have lost an estimated 5,000 acres of wetland in the Eastern Shore of Maryland due to nutria and sea level rise. The impacts are extreme. So we’re trying to eradicate them completely from the Chesapeake Bay.
Are nutria ever a danger to humans?
Across the nation, we have seen some interaction with humans — transmission of rabies, for example. Also in some areas where we have nutria, they start eating away the marshland, and you can have some infrastructure damaged — buildings and sewer lines — becoming exposed to erosion because of the nutria and rising sea level. They’re a big mammal, they range around 25 to 30 pounds. They can become extremely dangerous to humans.
After eradication, are any good uses for them, like for fur or meat?
Some people eat them, though it’s not a popular food item by any means. Fur, that was the original reason they were introduced here, but that industry’s not thriving at all. Our goal again is basic: to bring them to extinction here in the Delmarva Peninsula, eradicate them completely.
Betsy Woodruff
