Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is a Chesapeake Bay icon,
hosting hundreds of unique wildlife species
and more than a third of Maryland's emergent marsh habitat.
But over the past century,
more than 12 square miles of Blackwater's marshes have disappeared.
Now, a unique team of wildlife professionals
is helping to give this vital habitat a second chance at survival.
My name is Steve Kendraut.
I'm a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture
Wildlife Services Program,
and I'm the project leader for the Chesapeake Bay Nutria Eradication Project.
Nutria are an invasive species native to South America
that were brought to this area around Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge
in the 1940s.
And the Nutria began to have very serious impacts on our coastal wetlands here.
We began here 10 years ago at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge,
and by implementing a systematic trapping and hunting program,
we have successfully eradicated Nutria or close to eradicated Nutria
across about 160,000 acres of coastal marsh.
Kendraut's team is now on a race against time
to remove the entire species from the Chesapeake Bay by 2015
with a combination of technology and tradition.
The wildlife specialists that work on the project are a mix of folks.
Some were educated right here on the bay.
We've got that traditional, intuitive knowledge of the marsh,
so we integrate these ingrained cultural activities, trapping and hunting,
with really kind of high-tech mapping software and GPS global positioning systems
to apply really intense harvest pressure across the landscape.
We're a non-regulatory agency, and we can't go on private land
without the written permission of the landowners.
So it's really important that landowners understand the risk
that they face having Nutria in their marshes
and that we can help them alleviate those problems,
and all they need to do is allow us access to the marshes.
On a mild December morning, Kendraut joins part of his team
to survey the marsh of one such landowner,
who's recently reported spotting Nutria's sign on his property.
There, and there are Nutria turns. Very distinctive.
They've got this sort of long, tootsie roll sort of shape.
They're pretty prolific poopers as well,
so they'll leave a lot of scat in areas where there's a high density of Nutria.
Further downriver, the team confirms their suspicion of recent Nutria activity.
That there is fresh Nutria sign.
I don't know that we've gotten them documented in this marsh yet.
Do you have your GPS with you?
Yes, I do.
Mark its location in the GPS, and then when we go back to the shop,
we can download it onto the GIS, and then we can compile all the data on the GIS.
Once the information is recorded, the team prepares to explore the marsh on foot.
I grew up on L.A. Dahl and I've tracked and shot Nutria since I was five, six years old.
I'll find scat along the edge of the creeks,
and find the best pass or find their bedding area,
which is inside, or find these little drains running through,
and set traps, find where they're going.
Walk where the marsh is, not where the marsh ain't.
Soon, the extent of Nutria damage to the marsh is overwhelmingly clear.
So the guys have found a little spot here that's the beginnings of a Nutria eatout
where they destroy the plants in the middle of the opening.
They'll start working on the fringes on the outsides,
and it'll get larger and larger,
and over time, this area will erode and the marsh that remains will actually sink.
So I would expect that if we do nothing,
this area would continue to get bigger and bigger and more intensively damaged.
Usually we'll take our GPS,
we'll GPS the waypoint here,
and find your best location,
and start setting traps and getting them out of here.
We need to line up all the properties in order to start actively trapping,
because if you don't have all the properties with traps on them at the same time,
then Nutria could just bounce from this property to a property that doesn't have traps.
One of the most important things we like people to realize
is that Nutria don't pay attention to post-its signs.
We'll be contacting landowners and watersheds like the Wicomico River,
the Manokin River, to approach those landowners
and gain their permission to do our work in their wetlands
to protect the resources that they own.
