The Resilient Rat: Nutria in Louisiana

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Beyond Meat: Animal-Human Relations in New Orleans and Louisiana", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Entrepreneurs introduced nutria to Louisiana early in the twentieth century in the hopes of reestablishing a diminished fur market. Soon, the unwanted animal overpopulated the coastal regions of the state. State and federal actors unsuccessfully attempted various methods to increase the value of nutria. In 1958 the state legislature took action in a bill passed the next year that proposed a bounty on the animal while also removing it from the status of a protected furbearer. This action forever marked the animal as a pest. A “golden age” of nutria trapping arrived in the late 1960s and 1970s and nutria transformed to a respectable target. However, due to global changes in the climate and the international fur market, once again, by the 1980s the animal overpopulated the coast of Louisiana. The state responded by again passing a bounty on the animal funded as part of larger efforts of coastal restoration.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025   •
• Beyond Meat: Animal-Human Relations in New Orleans and Louisiana

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow