Amid the COVID-19 pandemic currently sweeping through North America, stay-at-home mandates in all major cities are leaving city streets far more empty than normal; and its got many urban-adapted wildlife species making more brazen moves in mankind’s absence.
Its clear the change in societal patterning is having a ripple effect surpassing just the focal point of a virus spread.
While much of the American populous is practicing social distancing, other creatures are taking full advantage of the dampened human presence in urban settings.
While states like Maryland and Delaware are actively looking to abolish their nutria populations, states in the deep south seem to be slightly less agressive. The coypu is highly regarded in regions around the Gulf of Mexico and southern U.S. Delta waterways; ironically, some of the first areas where nutria were introduced. Both Louisiana and Texas actually have regulated hunting and trapping seasons on the rodents. Cajun trappers of the Barataria region regard the nutria as an important staple of tradition and as an important community resource. Food and fur - and while the nutria pelt has its own commercial value, I’m told nutria meat is actually pretty tasty as well; no surprise, as trappers like myself are well accustomed to the table-fare of baked muskrat and beaver stew!
That said, even states with harvest seasons and bag limits recognize the absolute chaos nutria can inflict upon marshlands when not properly managed. The Louisiana Coastwide Nutria Control Program is quoted as stating “The decline in fur trapping activity since the mid-1980s has resulted in over population of nutria.” My personal translation - there aren’t as many trappers as there once was, and without regulated trapping activities taking place on the landscape, “big guns” are called in to heavily cull instead. Unlike civilian trappers, I’m willing to gamble each individual animal’s resources (pelt, hide, meat etc.) aren’t being fully utilized when the need arises for an eradication situation.
Furbearers like the river otter, fisher, beaver and bobcat were once gone, or almost gone, from the Pennsylvania landscape. But, with boosts from reintroduction programs and modern wildlife management, they’ve returned and have continued their comeback to that point that expanded seasons are being considered by the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
Veteran Catskills-area trapper Shawn Coston had his best year ever trapping bobcat this winter, finishing the season last weekend with seven to his credit – a number that the state Department of Environmental Conservation says is “extremely rare.”
Bobcats are elusive and “the (annual) average take per successful trapper hovers around 1.5,” said DEC spokeswoman Lori Severino. “According to DEC’s trapper survey, approximately 1,200 trappers pursued bobcats last season (estimate based on a subset of trappers surveyed). That season, there were 145 successful trappers, indicating that as many as 85 percent of trappers who targeted bobcat did not get one. Even if the survey overestimated the number of bobcat trappers, it’s still safe to say that a majority of trappers do not take a bobcat each season.”