Nutria Summary

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In the article “Nutria, A Rat-like Pest Ravaging Gulf Coast Wetlands, Can Be Lured With New Substance” by Stevens Institute of Technology introduce the reader to a new possibility when it comes to controlling the nutria rat population in Louisiana.
A 10-pound rodent that is ravaging the southern wetlands since it arrived here. Most of the damage “to the marshland ecology in the Mississippi Delta following Hurricanes Rita and Katrina” (Stevens Institute of Technology 1). The biology of the nutria rat provides them with a high reproduction rate. A female nutria rat can produce at least “five young per litter” but can deliver up to 13 about three times each year( Stevens Institute of Technology 1). Nutria rats arrived in Louisiana around the 1930s with a population of about 20 and then bred to an “estimated 20 million animals within two decades” (Stevens Institute of Technology 1). The warm weather in Louisiana allowed their population to rave in the marsh and wetlands.
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The government has tried many options to demolish the population but have come to the conclusion that they have to be trapped and sold for money. However, “Professor Attygalle and his biological colleagues, Professor Thomas Eisner and Steven Finckbeiner believe they have located the correct chemical compounds that offer an alternative”, “ecologically harmful poisoning”, to manage the population of nutria (Stevens Institute of Technology 1). This substance consists of “terpenoids, fatty alcohols, fatty acids and some of their esters” producing a poison but these compounds can attract many animals other than just nutrias so the material would have to be used strategically in order to help control the population size (Stevens Institute of Technology 2). But how did the population get to this

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