US seeks ways to deal with giant rat invasion

Invasive beavers native to South America are destroying swamps, farmland and golf courses across the US.

Beavers are voracious eaters. Photo: AP — DCeavers are invasive in the US. Photo: AP

Giant rats with orange teeth are spreading across the U.S. coastline, destroying almond trees, golf courses and bridges, the Wall Street Journal reported on April 11. The semi-aquatic beavers, native to South America, were introduced to the U.S. in the late 19th century for the fur trade. Once freed from captivity, the rats, which can weigh more than 20 pounds and breed year-round, have become very difficult to kill.

In Texas, nutria are among the most hunted. In Oregon, nutria hunting is year-round. California hopes the invasive species will begin to die out. State and federal officials in Maryland have spent more than two decades and $30 million to eradicate nutria and are ready to help other states.

Trevor Michaels, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture , heads the rodent eradication project. His team hunts down invasive rats across more than 500,000 acres of land and wetlands using a technique called “rolling thunder,” in which they use nets to trap and remove the rats before moving on to the next area. In 2015, after capturing 14,000 rats, officials in Maryland killed the last one.

California is also partly adopting Maryland’s approach, using sniffer dogs in the Chesapeake Bay to search for rats in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Officials are also adapting the Maryland tactic, trapping some rats and fitting them with radio collars that will guide them to other rats. “They don’t have collars, so collaring them is extremely challenging,” said Valerie Cook, manager of California’s nutria eradication program. Instead, California plans to use satellite tags that can be tracked from a distance.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources is working with the Department of Wildlife to survey the nutria, removing more than 1,500 by 2022.

Louisiana is trying to kill 400,000 nutria each year. The state’s marshes are so infested with nutria that officials pay $6 for each tail during hunting season. Louisiana has paid $30.2 million in bounties for 6.1 million nutria captured since the Coastwide Nutria Control program began in 2002. Nutria can eat a quarter of their body weight in food each day. Their voracious appetite has destroyed thousands of acres of Louisiana land, turning some marshes into puddles.

Louisiana funded research in the late 1990s into the nutritional value of beaver meat and its marketing as a human food source, but without success. However, some chefs and restaurants are now showing interest in beaver meat, which tastes like wild rabbit.

An Khang (According to Wall Street Journal )

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