Deer Movement Restrictions ConsideredState wildlife officials say more deliberation is needed before new rules are adopted governing Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s regulatory response to the detection of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in Texas. Consideration of proposed rules restricting deer movement in the CWD affected area of far West Texas will be delayed until the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission’s November meeting.Proposed rules being considered would limit permitted deer movement into or from areas in which CWD has been discovered as well as areas for which there is a moderate to high probability that the disease exists undetected.Officials will be collecting samples from hunter harvested mule deer for CWD testing. All mule deer harvested in the CWD Containment Zone of El Paso, Hudspeth, and Culberson counties during the upcoming mule deer season, Nov. 23-Dec. 9 will be inspected by officials at mandatory hunter check stations and tested for CWD. Mandatory check stations will be set up at the Van Horn Convention Center and at Mae’s Café in Cornudas.
Hunters in the surrounding High Risk Zone are encouraged to submit harvested deer for CWD testing at voluntary check stations in Bakersfield, Midland, Alpine and Sanderson, scheduled to be open during all three weekends of the general mule deer season.
---Staff Report
Hurricane Isaac Provided Natural Nutria Control
The surge of water Hurricane Isaac along the Mississippi coast flushed out and drowned thousands of nutria--giant rodents originally from South America that are eating away at coastal marshlands all along the Gulf Coast.
Most of the dead nutria washed up on beaches in Mississippi’s Hancock and Harrison counties.
"Estimates are there will be over 20,000 carcasses," said Robbie Wilbur, spokesman for the state’s department of environmental quality.
Fur trappers looking for new stock released nutria in Louisiana and Mississippi back in the 1930s. Fur demand kept populations in check, but a collapse fueled by animal-rights campaigns in the 1980s led to reduced trapping and a population now estimated at several million.
Consequently, nutria are "one of the Gulf South’s most notorious invasive species, wreaking ecological havoc on native wetland vegetation and contributing to coastal erosion problems," Mississippi’s Department of Environmental Quality said in its plan for dealing with invasives.
The bloated carcasses of dead nutria litter a Mississippi shoreline. photo: Courtesy Michael Spooneybarger
Nutria cause erosion by nutria digging into thin soils and eating roots of marsh vegetation. As the vegetation dies, the fine-grained, denuded soils become more vulnerable to erosion, eventually forming expanding holes in the marsh called "eat-outs."
The species is also a prolific breeder, reaching sexual maturity at just four months old, and females are able to breed again within 48 hours of giving birth to a litter.
---Staff Report
