Eat or toss nutria rats at the Nutria rodeo!

[Otherbrother]

@boingboing

I’ve always thought that it’d be great if we had some kind of object to shoot at in order to quell the tide of climate change. Shaking fists at Halliburton Road, just three miles up from the Venice, Louisiana marina, is a worthy use of time, but some really simplistic solution to this gargantuan mess we’ve gotten ourselves into would soothe many a weary heart. Nutria are such a gift. Shoot this thing, though it’s cute in it’s half-rat, half-capybara way, help fix the problem

Well I certainly hope that some meaningful good comes as a result of this hunt, but the numbers are daunting. Google tells me that there are approximately 25,000,000 of these guys in Louisiana alone. The rodeo website says that the last hunt netted less than 2,000 of them, so less than .008% of the estimated population. And these guys can birth 3 litters per year, so they repopulate very quickly.