WICOMICO RIVER – On the wall of the nutria eradication team’s drab office at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, there’s a large whiteboard with names and numbers on it. They’re bets for a long-running pool: How many nutria will the team find in the marshes of the Wicomico River?
“The people that guessed 90, 70, 120, they’ve already lost,” says Stephen Kendrot as he drives along a Wicomico County backroad.
It’s an overcast April afternoon with a long-awaited bit of warmth in the air. The nutria project leader is coming back from a site in Quantico, where four of his trappers are roaming the Wicomico River in jon boats. They’ve killed about 120 nutria there so far and found a few more this morning.
The river is the site of the final battle in the long-running quest to eradicate the beaver-like rodents (“nutria” means “otter” in Spanish) that have destroyed thousands of acres of the state’s wetlands over the past 40 years. It has taken longer than expected — news articles profiled the waning fight in 2011 — but finally, the state is almost free of the invasive rodents.
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9 comments:
OMG.. Call PETA
They should be giving the meat away to people on EBT/SNAP. Free food.
canadian geese that won't go home should be next.
12:35 Why? So THEY can KILL them themselves? PETA is a farce, and a disservice to animals. All about $$$ and celebrity endorsements. They should be removed, forcefully if needed.
1:37
Where is their home? They are Canada geese. They are named after a person not a country.
In Florida they are trapping armadillos and sending them to Washington. They serve it as possum on the half shell.
Call PETA to get rid of the democrats in DC.
1:37
Look out everyone, armchair biologist here.
I wish they would find a way to eradicate Democrats before that Civil War starts.
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