By Chris Kirkham
West Bank bureau
HOUMA -- The roar of Vernon Naquin's mudboat thunders through the marshes of Orange Grove Canal, just south of this Cajun Country hub. Scanning the acres of wetlands before him, Naquin spies the bright orange ribbon marking a trap set two days earlier.
He eases up on the throttle, motors toward it and sees the rustle of a rodent in the marsh grass. As Naquin's skiff gets closer, the captive nutria tries to bolt away. When that fails, it bares its bright orange teeth and lets out a growl.
Too late.
Naquin climbs off the boat, grabs a wooden stick and strikes a deadly blow to the nutria's head.
"That one there thought he had it made," Naquin said in a thick Cajun drawl, throwing the now-dead, 10-pound rodent on board and resetting the trap for another one. "But he don't know my trap."
As a lifelong trapper and man of the wild, Naquin, 57, has plied the marshes outside Houma for everything from frogs to shrimp to muskrat. When it comes to nutria, he and a dwindling number of trappers across the state have transformed into bounty hunters.
As nutria have chewed their way through hundreds of square miles of marshland in recent decades, they have become the pariah of coastal restoration efforts. Amid collapsing worldwide fur markets, state wildlife officials have grappled with ways to reduce the population of the South American rodent.
The most effective method so far: offering trappers a $5-per-tail incentive for killing the rodent. Since its inception in 2002, the bounty program has cut in half the number of acres of wetlands damaged by nutria and resulted in 15 times as many nutria killed by trappers and hunters.
In the grand scheme of wetlands restoration, the results are moderate. And across the country, nutria are creeping into suburban golf courses and drainage canals from Washington state to New Jersey.
Nonetheless, wildlife experts across the country are hard-pressed to find alternative population-control methods.
"There's a disconnect between what the nutria can do and what the marsh can tolerate," said Jacoby Carter, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wetlands Research Center in Lafayette. "Until we can figure that out, we'll just shoot as many nutria as we can get away with."
From pelts to tails
As the fog rose from the marshes and mud flats outside Houma on a recent morning, Naquin trained his eyes to spot the next of the 150 traps he had set two days earlier.
In winter months, he tries to stay one step ahead of nature. Forty-six years of trapping have given him a sixth sense of where the nutria move, where they feed. He places traps where he thinks the nutria will run, looking for upended marsh grass and burrows.
With his thick, calloused hands he motors his mudboat deftly through the maze of bayous as if it is part of his commute. Inside the boat are the day's supplies: two sticks for clubbing the nutria, a .22-caliber rifle for shooting wild ones and a pair of hedge clippers to clip the tails.
"There's two things them nutria don't like: that rifle and that stick," he said, throwing another pair of deceased rodents on board and steadying himself on the marsh with a walking pole.
"All these canals last year, they were filled with nutria," Naquin said. "Now they ain't here no more. I put a hurt on 'em."
For years, Naquin skinned nutria and made a good living off their pelts, netting $10 -- $11 for the better ones. As worldwide demand for fur coats and hats waned in recent decades, he is lucky if a pelt brings more than a dollar.
Now, nutria tails are Naquin's boon.
"There used to be good money in the furs, but those days are over," he said while skinning a nutria on a mud bank. "Who would have ever said, 'We're going to catch tails?' Who would have ever thought that?"
Nurtria market collapses
For years, Tabasco sauce magnate E.A. McIlhenny got the lion's share of the blame for introducing the rodents from South America to Avery Island in the 1930s. McIlhenny wanted to expand the fur trade in Louisiana at that time, so he brought nutria from South America to his home on Avery Island, the story went. But a hurricane blew down the nutria pen, releasing them into the wild.
The myth held for decades, sometimes perpetuated by family members themselves. But five years ago, a historian hired by the family found records that McIlhenny actually bought the nutria from a St. Bernard Parish fur dealer in 1938. He did eventually set the nutria loose, but not because of hurricane damage, said McIlhenny historian and curator Shane Bernard.
"I'm confident that all the myth has been stripped away," Bernard said. "Anybody who knows oral history or folklore knows how stories can change when they're passed down from one generation to the next."
Although McIlhenny received the blame, fur traders across the country had the same mind-set. From California and Washington on the West Coast to Maryland in the east, entrepreneurs saw bounty in introducing the rodents from Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and other South American countries. The U.S. Army actually introduced the species at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland, setting up fur farms to supply coats to troops.
As nutria made their way into the wild after escaping or being released from fur farms in Louisiana, rice and sugar cane farmers by the 1950s began to feel their wrath.
Louisiana wildlife managers in the early 1960s started promoting nutria pelts nationwide and abroad, particularly in Germany. By 1962, nutria had surpassed muskrat as the most popular game animal, and remained so for decades.
In the 1960s and 1970s, nutria harvests regularly clocked in at more than 1 million pelts annually. In 1976, Louisiana trappers brought in more than 1.8 million nutria pelts, bringing $15.7 million to the state's fur industry.
But fur's popularity declined in the 1980s, as styles changed and animal rights activism increased. Trappers left in droves for more profitable work, and state wildlife managers were left to deal with the exploding nutria population.
"Trapping's pretty tough. It's not a patsy job," said Joe Herring, a former secretary of the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries who saw the rise and fall of the fur trade during his 40 years with the department. "A lot of them now are part time .¤.¤. You're just losing trappers, just like you're losing other people with outdoor skills."
Nutria proliferate
Without their most lethal predator -- humans -- nutria proliferated.
Their biology allows them to reproduce at lightning speed, making them an unwieldy animal to control if released into the wild. A female nutria averages about five young per litter, but can birth as many as 13 at a time. A female can breed again within two days after giving birth, meaning one nutria can have up to three litters per year.
To get a sense of their productivity, 20 nutria brought to Louisiana in the 1930s bred an estimated 20 million animals within two decades, according to a wildlife group in Maryland that tracks nutria data.
Although nutria were brought to all parts of the country, warm weather in Louisiana has boosted their numbers. Already under pressure from saltwater intrusion, the marshes also have to deal with the nutria and their voracious appetite for the vital marsh roots that keep wetlands intact.
"The coastal marshes of Louisiana are dynamic and they are resilient, but when you start putting multiple stressors on even the most resilient system, they will start to break down," said Carter, the USGS ecologist. "It's not a question of which was the straw that broke the camel's back. It's the fact that you had 10 tons of hay on that camel. They are a part of the larger problem of multiple stressors on the marsh."
Until the nutria bounty program was instituted in 2002, state, local and federal officials had toyed with a variety of methods to stamp them out.
In some areas of Jefferson Parish, sheriff's deputies have used rifles to kill nutria blamed for damage to drainage canals. Parish officials also floated the idea of feeding them lethal yams. In 1997, the state introduced a $2 million program to create a market for nutria meat, but it largely failed as Louisianians showed little interest in eating the rat-like creatures.
Federal agencies have looked at various poisoning methods, but none of those efforts has gone very far because of the effects on other species. In Washington state, researchers at the USDA's National Wildlife Research are studying a bait technique intended to lure nutria to traps.
The Louisiana bounty program is seen as one of the most effective control techniques in the nation.
The amount of wetland affected by nutria damage has decreased from 83,000 acres in 2001 to 34,665 acres last year. Some of those numbers may overstate the effectiveness, as many of the areas previously eaten by nutria dissolved into open water after the 2005 hurricane season. There is no effective method for counting nutria in a certain area, an uncertainty that has hampered control efforts.
There were a record number of nutria brought in last year: 375,683, up from 24,683 nutria the year before the program was initiated. This year, the take has been slower: 142,944 nutria collected so far, compared with about 250,000 at this point in the season last year.
Post-storm migration
Although dead nutria lined the roads and canals of hurricane-damaged areas after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, wildlife officials do not know what impact the storms had on nutria populations.
They may have been pushed farther north as saltwater killed off some of the southernmost marshes, but the trend would be nothing new. During the past six decades, nutria from Louisiana have naturally migrated as far north as Tennessee and Arkansas, and into west Texas.
In other parts of the country, nutria are damaging riverbanks and creeping into suburban landscapes. As unwitting residents in the Northwest are feeding them, reports of nutria biting dogs and chasing children are on the rise.
Just as they are mowing through the marshes of Louisiana, nutria are chewing up riverbank improvements meant to help wild salmon populations in Oregon and Washington.
"Really, the nutria issues in the Pacific Northwest have only come to the forefront in the past few years," said Trevor Sheffels, a graduate student at Portland State University who works with state officials on nutria-control research. "As the development moves out into rural areas, nutria are being squeezed out of their habitat types. .¤.¤. We've got nutria stealing food off people's houses, living under people's houses."
Wildlife officials in the Northwest want to create a comprehensive nutria program, but with trappers and hunters on the decline nationwide, incentives are likely the only answer.
Even in Louisiana, the number of licensed trappers is a fraction of what it was a decade ago.
From a peak of 12,239 trappers in 1979, the number is now down to 1,737, according to Wildlife and Fisheries data.
Donald Ansardi, 71, the land manager of the Delacroix Land Corp. in St. Bernard Parish, has seen his family's trade go by the wayside. He remembers the days of the trapping "gold rush," when grocery boats used to deliver supplies to the camps in lower Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes.
"They've got to continue trying to control them," Ansardi said. "Everything costs us so much money, and this program is a blessing. It's just not feasible for anyone to go out and catch them without it."
Chris Kirkham can be reached at ckirkham@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3786.
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