Hurricane Katrina and Wildlife Management

[FWS]

How many of you realize there's a cause and effect issue regarding trapping and the storm damage in Coastal Louisiana ?

Think of the effect nutria (Myocastor coypu) have had on the coastal marshlands, the marshlands serve as a buffer against erosion and storm surge. But thousands of acres of that marshland has been lost over the decades from nutria eatouts and the subsequent erosion that results from them.

This is but one of the factors involved but it is a factor nonetheless. The Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries has been THE most active state agency in defending traps, trapping, trappers and good management. And they have been active in market development. They are deserving of a lot of respect.

We can't blame it on the loss of equipment, but rather on the loss of a viable market for nutria.

For the pic below,

"This aerial photograph shows an "eat out." The brown areas of the marsh have been damaged by nutria. In the center, as indicated by the arrow, is an area that has been fenced off to exclude the nutria."



A closer look at the fenced area shows the plants are much taller and healthier inside, away from the nutria.



Read the article from IAFWA,

www.furbearermgmt.org/casestudies3.asp

[coyote]

you get the same effect around here when you put up a deer EXclosure...

fence the deer out?, get tree seedlings.

don't fence?...get ferns or striped maple

[Beaverboy]

And I wonder if the levy breaks were help by denning weaking the structure?

[bblwi]

Not only the denning but the roots of plants with no live material above ground is dead in the soil too. Does not hold water like live roots do.

It is amazing the power of any species and it's habits once it begins to exceed the balance point between their numbers and their environment.

Bryce

[FWS]

And I wonder if the levy breaks were help by denning weaking the structure?

I don't think so from where it occurred, there are other reasons that were well documented as problems beforehand.

And from what I've heard the Corps of Engineers were going to strengthen that section and others that were weak but the funds were cut a couple years ago. We'll be hearing a lot about this and most certainly who made that decision.

[FWS]

It is amazing the power of any species and it's habits once it begins to exceed the balance point between their numbers and their environment.

Bryce, since nutria are an introduced species I don't think a 'balance' is really possible here. I trapped nutria in OR and WA and I've seen their effects in person in LA.

Absolutely voracious and downright rude to other species.

[bblwi]

FWS, yes with an invasive species there will never be an ecological balance in an ecosystem that they are not endemic to.
Studying wildlife ecology over time(not so much as of late) was interesting when studying carry capacities and relationships. I can remember reading some of Aldo Leopold's muskrat work while he was in IA. Very eye opening. When I was at Madison in Wildlife we spent some time studying the relationship between rat populations, percent openness and the most desirable %s for geese and ducks. They can regulate the dam and H2O level but rats can be a major player. I found that interesting.
When one looks at an eat out. I remember one of my first years teaching Ag here, about in the mid to late 1970s. I was standing and watching two fields of oats being invaded by army worms. In 3 hours about 12-15 acres were gone and the worms crossing the road were so greasy that some cars slid in the ditch. Fortunately small scale but an unbelievable sight to see.

Bryce

[FWS]

Louisiana had instituted a bounty program on nutria, $4 for every tail turned in, funding came from the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act
. Here's a good synopsis from the LA DOWF

www.nutria.com/site6.php

This is a pretty interesting read as well in regards to wetlands protection and levy reconstruction. Hmmm......

US earlier rebuffed Louisiana on aid
Plan to help fund coastline project was cut from bill
By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff | September 1, 2005

WASHINGTON -- As recently as this summer, Louisiana pleaded for federal help to protect the state's rapidly eroding coastline -- a key natural defense against floods and major storms like Hurricane Katrina -- but the state was rebuffed by an administration and a Congress bent on budget-cutting and reluctant to pay for expensive preventative measures, according to congressional staff and budget-watchers.

Cajun State lawmakers, worried that a single powerful hurricane would do even more damage to its coast, wanted a provision in the massive federal energy bill that would give Louisiana a share of profits from offshore oil drilling. The plan would pour an estimated $1 billion a year into the state's coffers, money it would use to build up its natural barriers against flood waters from a hurricane -- a project lawmakers estimate would cost up to $14 billion over 10 years.

But the idea was slashed from the energy bill, which had been criticized for being packed with local pork projects like a $1.1 billion nuclear reactor for Idaho and a multimillion-dollar coal plant for Alaska. Previous attempts to get federal funds for the Louisiana coastal project had been rejected over the course of decades.

Now, lawmakers and disaster planning specialists say, Congress will pay dearly to rebuild the region after Katrina, an effort that could cost at least $25 billion.

''We have long warned that we've got a choice of 'pay now or pay later,' " Representative Bobby Jindal, Republican of Louisiana, said in a phone interview after taking an aerial tour of his devastated congressional district. Jindal said he has long implored his congressional colleagues to help shore up the Louisiana coastline -- where land about the size of a football field had been sinking into the Gulf of Mexico at an alarming rate, even before Katrina.

''I said, 'If we don't invest in this now, we'll be paying a lot higher cost' " in disaster relief, said Jindal, who noted that he did not know the condition of his own home in the New Orleans metropolitan area. ''We certainly didn't want to be proven right."

Currently, Louisiana is involved in two long-term environmental projects to address flooding: an Army Corps of Engineers plan to build up the complex system of levees, canals, and pumps that keep the New Orleans area dry, and the rehabilitation of the state's Gulf Coast shoreline, an important natural buffer against massive storm damage.

Members of the state's congressional delegation managed to obtain some federal dollars for the projects, with $540 million in the energy bill, to be spent long term, and a pending $1.9 billion from the energy and water appropriations bill. But Jindal said the money is not enough to completely solve either the wetlands or levee problems, and added that the Army Corps of Engineers still does not have enough money to finish the work it started years ago.

Under federal law, some states get to keep half of the royalties from onshore drilling done within their borders; a quirk in the law allows Texas to get royalties for drilling up to 10 miles off its coast, Jindal said, but Louisiana cannot get royalties from offshore drilling even a few miles from its coast. Instead, the federal government keeps the royalties, he said.

Next week, Congress is expected to assemble an aid package to help rebuild the region. While no figure has been set, the package will probably be generous, said Jenny Manley, spokeswoman for Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi and chairman of the Appropriations Committee that will decide the amount.

House leaders said they are also ready to help. ''We will not rest until everyone that has been affected by this disaster has been given proper assistance," House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and House majority whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, both Republicans, said in a joint statement.

Budget watchdog groups and veteran Capitol Hill staff members said it is typical for Congress to reject expensive projects that avoid catastrophe but do not offer an immediate benefit, only to pay out billions in taxpayer money on a disaster that could have been prevented. This time, huge federal tax cuts and the spiraling costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan have limited the amount of money Congress can spend on domestic projects, they said.

''The very nature and structure of Congress is that we never fund things in a preventative manner," said Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget analysis group.

But ''right now, you'd be a lunatic to be pinching pennies when people are swimming in their own sewage. We're going to pay what we've got to pay to save lives," he said.
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