Trappers of the Barataria

Nutria Traditions

Jon and Jocelyn Donlon

Douglas Robinson

Project manager, Louisiana nutria control program

Douglas Robinson, Nutria Control Program Project Manager

Douglas Robinson, a native of Baton Rouge, has used his business administration degree from Southeastern (1967) while dealing with the paperwork involved with the Louisiana Nutria Control Program. Doug, an Environmental Consultant with Coastal Environments of Baton Rouge (which handled a contract to carry out the particulars of the Nutria Control Program) does much of the fieldwork, and virtually all the special building for the firm. During our interview, he pointed out a yards- long bulletin board and building adaptations he'd done, as he took us to the gear barn. There, he pointed out his various modifications and special-use adaptations made to the airboats.

Mr. Robinson has been with Coastal Environments for more than five years. A native of South Louisiana, Robinson was once a commercial fisherman, so he was experienced in the outdoors before coming aboard. He has worked on such projects as monitoring seismograph, construction, maintenance, and Christmas Tree projects (using Christmas trees to trap sediment and build up barriers against coastal erosion) around the state. Recently he moved 8,000 trees to a pond in St. Charles Parish to act as a settlement barrier and deter erosion there.

Currently, Mr. Robinson is supervisor of Louisiana's Nutria Control Program. When the bottom fell out of the fur market, there was little or no active incentive to trap. The introduction of the Nutria Control Program, instituted to stymie ongoing environmental impact and damage, paid a fee for helping to reduce the overall size of the wild population. As Robinson explains, the awareness of nutria damage is so acute, that some large landowners demand that the trappers using their acreage also cull a certain quota of nutria in order to maintain their alligator license.

While nutria are not solely responsible for damage to Louisiana's coastline, they play a significant role. "Nutria," Doug says, "are vegetarians. And they love the roots. So, once the start eating the roots, the plant dies. Once the plant dies, any wave action, any of that, will start eroding. They'll start in a good healthy marsh. They will start, start in the middle, and before you know it, it's just a sinkhole, just open. No vegetation." The process continues, he explains, since the wave action doesn't allow new plants to take root.

"You have to remember, Robinson said, "eight to ten years ago there were approximately a thousand trappers going out. These thousand trappers were taking about a million nutria a year out. This went on for about four years. Then the price of fur made a total drop, from the overseas market. And, I think, last year, I'm going to say 200-250 trappers took 25 to 40,000. That was it. There was no demand. They couldn't make money off it," he explained.

Alligators eat nutria as food, but not enough of them. A large nutria weighs 15-18 lbs, and "it takes a big alligator to eat something like that," says Robinson. Alligators also feed off of muskrat, fish, birds, and other wildlife, so their appetite, alone, is not enough to control the damage done by the water rat. What's more, nutria can breed roughly three times a year, and can start breeding when they're thirty days old, and produce a litter of five-six. "They're walking baby makers," according to Doug.

To control the damage to the coastline, the federal and state governments have established Louisiana's Nutria Control Program, regulated by the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The program is funded for five years, at least. Coastal Environment won the contract to monitor tail collection and locations of harvesting. C.E. set up monitoring stations along the coastline. Rockefeller Refuge, Cameron Parish, and Abbeville were not as active as Morgan City, Houma, Luling, and Chalmette. The four active sites were visited each week. Ultimately, Terrebonne and Plaquemines Parishes saw the most activity.

For the program, a special 16-foot trailer was constructed, complete with refrigeration for the collected tails. The Coastal Environments team would travel just about daily to one or another collection point. Their goal was to build morale and enthusiasm among the trappers who participated, so they also made very sure the paperwork was done to record the catches and to generate the return checks.

The program began on November 20 with 250 participants, and ended on March 31 with 500. According to Jeff Marx, at Wildlife and Fisheries, 308,160 nutria were caught during the four months. Each trapper was required to maintain a valid trapping license, to gain the state's permission to hunt/trap public land, and to obtain the landowner's permission to work private land.

Participants were restricted to approved sites, to daylight hours, to harvesting only adult nutria, and to either trapping or to shooting with steel bullets (to avoid lead pollution). Whether participants hunted or trapped was determined by cost (shooting is much cheaper), vegetation (in some marshy areas, only trapping was feasible), the tide (a big tidal movement can put traps underwater), and whether or not the body would be sold for fur and meat (which necessitates trapping to avoid damage or lead poisoning).

Once the nutria was killed, the hunter/trapper had to cut the tail, sink the bodies in the marsh or bury them. The trapper was issued a registered card so that his/her collected tails could be documented for payment at $4.00 per tail. Coastal Environments disposed of the tails at an approved BRI landfill in Sorrento. Some participants kept the bodies to sell for meat and fur, though the demand is not high. They could sell meat for $1.00, and the fur for $2-3. A lot of animals were sold "round"-sold whole. The buyer would then skin them, and process the meat and fur.

Once the nutria tails were recorded, GIS workers mapped each transaction on a state map, which ran approximately 100 trappers per week, who brought in about 20,00 tails per week. The biggest week was 25,000. Quickly, a databank developed showing where the harvest activity was greatest. Then, the Wildlife and Fisheries folks could do other "flyovers" to access marsh conditions and observe the nutria "trails." When the time sequenced maps were overlaid, the results gave graphic suggestion about what the nutria are doing, and where the harvest is coming from.

Doug cautions, "You have to remember, it's not an eradication program; it's a control program." Nevertheless, it "filled a void in roughly 500 families," an economic impact of millions of dollars.