Nutria have been a nuisance in Europe for some decades now, having escaped and been released from fur farms. In areas where there are dikes they can pose a risk, but otherwise they’re pretty harmless neozotes. They’re also cute as fuck. My area has a pretty amount of natural and artificial ponds and the nutria, being pretty ok with humans in proximity, make good use of areas that their shyer relatives like beavers avoid. Our local pond has been populated by them since last year and yesterday we took a walk around it. Did I say “pretty ok with humans?”. Well, actively investigating us would be more accurate. As I took out my phone, this fellow came over to investigate whether that thing might be edible. The whiskers do tickle.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
There used to be Coypu (the common name for them in the UK) all over East Anglia and a few other parts of the UK. They were successfully eradicated by 1989, as they caused commercial damage and loss of habitat for native species.
https://norfolkbiodiversity.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/a-success-story/
I had to look up nutrias. They come from the cooler parts of South America. Apparently, Finland is too cold for them but there’s a possibility that they could be established here as the climate warms.
Then there’s the muskrat (not to be confused with), a surprisingly similar looking but not very closely related animal from North America, that’s much more widespread in Europe, and also sometimes considered a harmful invasive. It’s been long present in Finland without causing much problems.
They looks so chill. Like “I’m not bothering you. I’m sure you won’t bother me.”
In CZ, coypu are considered invasive, and they have become a huge problem these last few years. One part of the problem is that some ill-informed people are actually feeding them. That might be the case in Germany, too, and that is why this individual was so tame. Do not feed these fuckers, they can then become emboldened, demanding, and even aggressive -- in Zlin in CZ they actually attacked and killed a dog this year and the city started to dish out fines for feeding them.
One big reason for them being here in the first place is that some even more ill-informed people released them in the wild in hundreds from fur farms at the end of last century (together with another invasive species, mink). And I am using the word ill-informed because words like “idiot” or “imbecile” are mean. But honestly, I have no kind words for someone who knows so little about biology that they release en masse non-native species into nature in the name of “loving animals and nature”. I was about fifteen at the time, younger than those “activists” and even then I knew that they fucked up mightily when I have seen it reported on the news.
They are an invasive pest but they are currently in legal limbo. Killing them is not considered poaching because they are not considered game animals, however, feral ones can only be killed by either a gamekeeper/hunter or a certified exterminator. But since their furs are no longer valuable and veterinary checks on meat from hunted animals are expensive, hunters have no real incentive to kill them either for food or for meat and thus they propagate and wreak havoc on agriculture near waterways.
At the same time, they can be -- and are -- still privately grown for food, my cousin did that and they do taste OK though nothing to write home about.
That means if, hypothetically, there was an invasive population nearby and those fuckers encroached on my property and damaged my garden, I would not be allowed to trap and kill them and recuperate the damage they did from their dead body (however ill-advised it would be to do that with a wild animal without veterinary inspection). I would not be poaching, but it would be considered animal abuse. To get rid of them, I would need to hire an exterminator and then pay a rendering plant for the elimination of the dead body as well.
But I could grow them in a cot, feed them, and then kill them at will and nobody would bat an eye. Like my cousin used to do, before deciding to ditch them and keep only rabbits.
That being said, in case my feelings are unclear, cute they might be, but I hate them with a fiery passion. I am glad I live far enough from running water for my garden to be safe from them. I have enough problems with voles and mice.
They have no place in Europe, they have no natural predators and they should not be here.
Charly
While it may occasionally have been animal rights activists, the vast majority got released by the fur farmers themselves. Killing and deposing of the dead bodies would have cost money.
@Giliell, true. But whilst I don’t have kind words for those farmers either, I am somewhat more understanding of following a financial incentive when living in a badly regulated capitalist system than I am of willful stupidity. Financial incentives can be modulated, but willful stupidity cannot.
I might come off a bit cranky because I am. And given the recent electoral results in the USA I am getting pissed off thinking about idiots of any sort. Especially that kind that should know better.
@Charly
Farmers should know better as well, but at the moment they’re at the forefront of killing the planet.
I disagree. The goal of farmers is to turn a profit, not to protect the environment or the animals. From that point of view, releasing the animals makes sense if it saves money. It is the duty of the government to create the right environments and provide incentives to promote beneficial and discourage harmful behavior in search of profits. That farmers currently work on destroying the planet whilst (mostly) providing a necessary service of feeding humankind is not a failure on the part of the farmers but on the governments that should regulate them.
On the other hand, those activists who were releasing minks from fur farms in CZ in hundreds as recently as in 2017 (Found by a quick Google search of Czech news. I admit I could not find any news about coypu, but those fur farms were phased out sooner.) are saying that they care about nature and animal well-being whilst doing things that are in direct contradiction of caring for nature and animal well-being.
The animals they release mostly die in short order (horribly, either by starvation or cold or disease or getting run-over by cars), and those few who survive subsequently destroy the environment, harming other animals in the process. And this is well known for at least several decades now. Anyone who releases non-native animals into nature in the name of caring for said animals is nothing more than an idiot who denies the reality that does not conform to what they perceive it should be.
Invasive but cute is about half the animals in Australia (except for cane toads)
Are they any good to eat?
@chigau, I mentioned in #4 that they are edible. My cousin used to raise them for food and he gave us one once. I do not remember it particularly well, I was not impressed with the taste. It was a bit like a rabbit, I think. I would prefer it to turkey or beef, both of which are my least favorite meats, but I would nor really enjoy it like I do shrimp or salmon.