Nutria bounty rises to $6 per tail

Louisiana's most infamous semi-aquatic rodent -- with webbed toes and Cheetos-colored buck teeth -- now has a higher bounty on its head.

After three years of low nutria catches, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has raised from $5 to $6 the amount it will pay for each nutria killed in the upcoming 2019-20 season.

The move is an attempt to reverse a decline in the number of nutria caught or killed. The program was holding fairly steady until the 2016-17 season, when nutria catches fell by about 38%.

Most of the damage caused by nutria is happening in Terrebonne Parish, which is also where most nutria tails are collected.

Catherine Normand, a biologist at the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, said that while a $1-per-nutria increase may not seem like much, it could equate to hundreds or even thousands of dollars for some of the state's most prolific nutria hunters.

"What we are trying to do is create an artificial market to make it worth people's time, especially for the individuals that harvest a lot," said Normand.

Smaller than beavers but larger than muskrats, nutria are native to South America. In the 1930s, the fur industry imported them as a potential new source of skins for coats and hats. Some nutria escaped, and many more were released after the decline of the industry following World War II.

Since then, nutria have thrived in Louisiana's lush coastal marshes. They eat marsh plants and especially like the roots, which makes it hard for the plants to grow back.

When the roots are gone, the soil around the plants erodes more quickly than it otherwise would. Marshland is then converted to open water, contributing to the loss of coastal areas already impacted by soil subsidence, saltwater intrusion through oil and gas company canals, and other factors.'

After the animals spent decades eating their way through coastal Louisiana, the state's Coastal Nutria Control Program was born in 2002, giving incentive payments to anyone who kills a nutria and hands in its tail as proof.

Although there was a slight improvement this past year, the numbers are not anywhere near where officials want them to be, said Normand, who oversees the control program.

A just-issued report on the 2018-19 season offered details on the tails, the dollars and the continuing coastal damage.

This past nutria season, which generally runs from November to March, around 240 people participated in the nutria harvest, collecting about 223,000 tails worth more than $1.1 million in incentive payouts.

The most zealous hunter handed in just shy of 11,000 nutria tails -- worth $55,000.

After each hunting season, wildlife officials fly over 200 transects, or lines of flight, across coastal marshes from Texas to Mississippi, estimating the damage from the rodents.

During their flights this year, they found damage across 3,900 acres at 25 different sites. By extrapolating the findings, the officials estimate that the total damage this season was around 14,600 acres statewide.

There were 910 acres damaged from last season that since turned into open water.

Four new places also saw damage this year after being damage-free for around a decade. In St. Mary Parish, the places included an area directly east of Cypremort Point, the Atchafalaya Wax Lake area and south of Shell Island Pass. Marshes near Hackberry Bayou in Terrebonne Parish were also newly damaged.

The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries predicts that this year nearly 75% of the sites will not see any recovery.

Each season, the goal of the control program is to collect around 400,000 tails. They have reached that goal only once, in 2009-10.

Still, the coastline would be in worse shape without the program, Normand said. Louisiana is predicted to suffer drastic changes to its coastline from sea-level rise and erosion, and without this program the damage would already be further along.

One roadblock to expanding the program is the lack of access to some privately owned land. If landowners allowed more hunting of nutria there, it could help officials reach their culling goals.

The program is currently funded through 2022.