THE LEDGER-STAR
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 5, 1994 TAG: 9410050731
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Short : 36 lines
With only its tiny black eyes visible above the water line, the giant, bucktoothed rodent swims in a flooded ditch, then dives at the sight of John Gallegos' jeep and disappears.
If only nutria would really disappear.
``We generally don't have a real good opinion of nutria here,'' says Gallegos, a biologist at the 12,000-acre Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia's extreme southeast corner.
Nutria, pronounced ``new tree uh,'' are proliferating throughout the southeast United States and Texas. And as they do, they're giving wildlife managers fits.
They're tearing up marshes by uprooting wetland plants. They're burrowing into earthen dams, where they like to make their homes. And they're running off smaller mammals, which are forced to relocate.
Refuge workers at Back Bay strongly suspect nutria damage marshes and have chased away the refuge's once-thriving muskrat population.
States have begun to try to do something about nutria, which biologists often describe with adjectives this newspaper won't print.
Maryland lawmakers this year passed a law intended to eradicate nutria from Maryland's Eastern Shore. Wildlife officials there have been briefed by their peers in England, where more than $4 million was spent during a 10-year period to wipe out the nutria population. by CNB