The dogs are out, training to look for something no one wants them to find. In a field at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Bradie, a Labrador retriever mix, and her human handler, Trevor Michaels, are playing a strange game of fetch. Smaller than a beaver but larger than a muskrat, with orange buck teeth and webbed feet, nutria are strong swimmers and live in colonies, where the females reproduce copiously. They are believed to live up to six years in the wild, a lifespan during which they can destroy plenty of marsh, which they do as they feed.
These semi-aquatic rodents are just one of many invasive animals and plants that affect the Chesapeake Bay and other watersheds, species that cause billions of dollars of damage to infrastructure projects and ecosystems every year.
Zebra mussels clog discharge pipes in the Great Lakes and can be spread via recreational boats from state to state. Blue catfish eat their way through estuaries and lakes, out-competing native fish populations. Plants like English ivy and multiflora rose crowd out native flowers and shrubs.
Adaptable and opportunistic, they are difficult to eradicate once established. So, when multiple agencies launched the CBNEP in to get rid of nutria at Blackwater refuge in Dorchester County and elsewhere on the Delmarva, success was not assured.
The program has been so successful that the USFWS and the Mid-Atlantic Panel on Aquatic Invasive Species have recommended the techniques and equipment be adapted to an area south of the James River in Virginia that needs to control a growing nutria population. Fies, a wildlife research biologist and furbearer project leader for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, who has been consulting with Maryland leaders to help his state eliminate its nutria populations in the early stages.
