Could putting swamp rat on your dinner plate help save California marshland?
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They look like a cross between an otter and a gopher but they taste something like a rabbit or dark meat from turkey. And conservation officials want you to eat as many of them as you can.
The nutria, an invasive swamp-dwelling rodent, is wreaking havoc on California ecosystems, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. They were brought from South America for their fur decades ago and are now found in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where they can consume up to one-fourth of their body weight in vegetation every day, damaging the marsh environment.
Last week was national invasive species week, and officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service used the occasion to urge Californians to hunt and eat nutria to help control their numbers.
The agency even rolled out a catchy slogan: “Save a Swamp, Sauté a Nutria.”
Adults are about 2 feet long and weigh some 15 to 20 pounds, with plenty of meat for a gumbo or stew.
In the wild, their burrowing behavior can breach levees and weaken structural foundations, per the state Fish and Wildlife Department. They can waste and destroy 10 times what they eat, “causing extensive damage to the native plant community and soil structure, as well as significant losses to nearby agricultural crops,” the department wrote.
A UC Davis study found a population of Bay Area ground squirrels hunting and eating voles, suggesting the species may be more flexible in its diet than previously thought.
When the plant cover and soil organic matter are destroyed, the results can be dire: “severe erosion of soils, in some cases destroying marshlands,” according to the Fish and Wildlife Department, plus threats to rare, threatened or endangered species that make their habitats therein.
Opponents have painted Democratic Rep. Josh Harder of Turlock as a Bay Area carpetbagger backed by San Francisco elites and tech moguls. The perfect project to combat that image is taking on the nutria, an invasive swamp rat that threatens to damage levees and eat through Central Valley wetlands.
Originally bred for a fur trade that collapsed in the 1940s, feral nutria populations have since spread to at least 16 states, including California, which declared the rodent eradicated in the 1970s.
California’s latest infestation was discovered in early 2017. State and federal agencies have warned that the explosive population growth combined with California’s reliance on expansive waterways connected to the Delta make the state especially vulnerable.
The rodents are prolific breeders: Females have up to three litters a year, and can mate within 48 hours of giving birth.
The Fish and Wildlife Department has taken nearly 5,500 nutria from California wetlands as of early February. Nearly half were in Merced County, with Fresno, Stanislaus and Solano counties supplying most of the rest.
Nutria hunters can go to Nutria.com for a number of recipes for cooking the rodent, including a crock-pot preparation, nutria chili and stuffed nutria hindquarters.
The Fish and Wildlife Department, however, says not so fast.
“CDFW does not encourage nutria hunting out of concern other species could be mistakenly targeted,” said Krysten Kellum, a spokesperson for the agency. “Misidentification is still a huge issue in [California], and accidental take of otters or beavers can have legal implications.”
Most nutria infestations in California are on private property, where hunters would need written permission from the landowner, she said, or on public lands where nutria hunting is not permitted.
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