How Nutria Took Over Louisiana

Trappers had pulled in a half million pelts in the 1957–58 season, up from approximately 78,400 seven years prior (more than a 500% increase). Though prices had taken a recent dip, opportunities for trappers and tanners were still plentiful: the furs supplied material for coats and coat linings, and the carcasses could be sold for dog and mink food. 

By the 1980s, however, the nutria had become a full-blown scourge. Over the decade prior, demand for fur plummeted. According to the state’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, fur fell out of fashion in many parts of the world, owing in part to the animal-rights movement. Concurrent with the drop in demand was a boom in Louisiana’s oil and natural-gas industries, which offered better and steadier wages than did trapping. Many of the state’s tanneries and trappers had moved on to other prospects. The nutria population surged, threatening coastal wetlands because of the animal’s practice of tearing up grasses at the root and damaging levees and roadways with its tunnels.  

So began, in 2002, the campaign to mitigate the orange-toothed rodent of unusual size (10 to 18 pounds on average). Trappers became bounty hunters, and today the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries offers $6 per tail to encourage nutria-population control.  

Law enforcement were tasked with shooting nutria as part of their routine duties, reaching a dramatic peak in the mid-1990s with Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee’s campaign to decimate the 9,000-plus population that was overtaking the area’s drainage canals. Smaller and less-successful efforts included attempts to market nutria meat for human consumption. 

A 1963 cookbook published by Louisiana State University offered recipes for nutria gumbo, macaroni-nutria casserole, and nutria chop suey. In recent years, the artist Cree McCree, through her Righteous Fur fashion line, has sought to reframe nutria fur and jewelry as an eco-friendly, wetlands-assisting choice.