Nutria
A Coastwide Nutria Control Program has recently been announced by CWPPRA and several partnered agencies: the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, and the LSU Agricultural Center.
The program's centerpiece is a $4.00 incentive payment on nutria tails measuring at least 7-inches in length. The program is designed to curtail the wetlands loss associated with the nutria (Myocastor coypus), the voracious, nonnative rodent whose appetite for wetland vegetation impacts roughly 100,000 acres of south Louisiana's wetlands.
The application process requires that participants' first secure a valid trapping license, then apply for the specific approval as a nutria control program participant. Although there is a fee for the trapping license, participation in the nutria control program is free.
The program is unique among CWPPRA projects because of its geographical breadth. While most CWPPRA projects aim to mitigate wetland loss in critical target areas through measures such as shoreline protection, vegetative plantings, or hydrologic diversions, the Coastwide Nutria Control Program is, indeed, coastwide.
Ranging from the Texas border to the west and the Mississippi border to the east, the program encompasses southern Louisiana below U.S. Interstate 10 (from the Texas line to Baton Rouge), U.S. Interstate 12 (from Baton Rouge to Slidell), and, finally, U.S. Interstate 10 once again (from Slidell to the Mississippi state line).
Although nutria harvesting was once a profitable enterprise in southern Louisiana, that hasn't been the case for several decades now. For example, harvests in the late 1970s topped out at 1.8 million nutrias that sold at an average price of $8 each, providing $14.4 million in base-level economic production to Louisiana. However, as demand for nutria has declined across the years, so, too, has the price. And along with the decrease in price has come the decrease in trappers' incentives to harvest the mammal. (View harvest/price graph.)
The best year in the past decade came in the 1996-97 season, when some 360,000 nutria were harvested, fetching a market price of roughly $5.25 each. However, just how severely the bottom has dropped out of the market--and just how closely tied the harvest is to the market price--can be seen in the 2001-02 season just past.
Selling at only $1.50 apiece, Louisiana trappers only brought in 25,000 nutria in the past season, roughly 1.5% of the peak harvest seen in the 1970's. Hence, the program's offer of $4.00 per seven inch tail, when coupled with the $1.50 the pelt and meat from mature animals brought in the last season, means that the total profit for trappers could well be back to that of the 1996-97 season.
The program's goals are to see 400,000 nutria tails turned into the program's regional collection centers across the upcoming 2002-03 season. As the program proceeds, adjustments to the price may be made based upon incoming harvest numbers. Likewise, the 400,000 harvest figure may be adjusted as well. As it stands now, that number also serves as a harvest cap, a cap necessary because of the funding constraints of the program itself.
For more information about the program, contact:
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries,
Fur and Refuge Division
2415 Darnall Road
New Iberia, Louisiana 70560Phone: (318) 373-0032
Fax: 318 373-0181