Can Invasivores Save Our Planet?

In today’s blog Ann argues that we can make our planet more environmentally sound by eliminating specified ingredients from our diets. This certainly has merit, especially when it comes to things like corn, wheat, or beef. But there may be a flip side of that argument. Rather than cleansing our pantries and fridges of planet-unfriendly items, it may be just as responsible to stock our pantries and fridges with planet-unfriendly foods and ingredients. Let me explain.

A YouTube video shared by my cycling friend, Larry, got me thinking about this. He follows our blog and assumed the video would be of culinary interest. It shows in excruciating detail how to prep and deep fry rats (with mango sauce of course). While gawking at the food preferences of other cultures may be entertaining, which I’m sure explains its nearly 4 million views, I was more interested in the question of whether cultural acceptance of rats as human food may help control their population (I’m referring to the population of rats, not humans).

The practice of eating planet-unfriendly organisms (such as rats) as a population control strategy is not restricted to other cultures. Take what’s happening in Louisiana as a case in point. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I was introduced to the marshes and backwaters of Louisiana by Al, a senior colleague at LSU and a native Louisianan and avid fisherman. On my first foray into the waterways with Al I spotted what looked like a huge rat on the bank of one of the canals. When I asked what it was he said that it was a nutria and that they are bad news.

They are “bad news” indeed. According to a 2020 USDA Wildlife Services factsheet, nutria are considered an “invasive species” and are quite nasty.

And, on top of that, nutria are a public health and safety menace.

Al’s comment that these huge rodents are “bad news” was definitely an understatement, especially when we consider that there are an estimated 6,000 nutria per square mile in Southeast Louisiana and that adult females not only produce two litters of up to 13 babies per year, they can breed within a day of having a litter. Where are they finding all of that the time to cause so much havoc? And, who wants to get nutria itch?

So what has been done to control these huge rats? True to our country’s capitalistic impulses, government sponsored programs have tried to turn nutria (dead ones, that is) into something of economic value. Initially, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) introduced programs to promote nutria for the the global fur market, but for a variety of reasons that market has tanked, weakening the incentive for trappers to harvest nutria.

In another effort to control nutria LDWF is offering a bounty of $6 per nutria tail. In 2020 around 240 people participated in the nutria harvest, collecting about 223,000 tails worth more than $1.1 million in incentive payouts. One hunter bagged just under 11,000 nutria tails — worth $55,000. Even with that program in place the nutria population has kept growing.

[Editor’s note: I have to include this tidbit from a NY Times article regarding a possible problem with offering bounties for tails: “In 1902, the French colonial government in Hanoi, Vietnam, hellbent on slaughtering the city’s rats, offered a bounty for each rodent tail delivered as proof of execution; cunning entrepreneurs simply chopped off the tails and released the rats, leaving them free to breed and produce more rats, hence more tails and more bounties.”]

Perhaps the most interesting potential for controlling the nutria population is summarized by the slogan If you can’t beat them, eat them. Efforts have been made to elevate nutria meat to be comparable to pork or turkey on our dinner tables. Famous chef’s have been recruited to develop nutria recipes and extensive advertising campaigns have been funded by the LDWF.

Louisiana is not alone in its efforts to control destructive species. According to Ligaya Mishan in a NY Times article entitled When Invasive Species Become the Meal, local campaigns such as found in Louisiana are part of a broader movement which is

The goal of this broader movement is to encourage people to become invasivores (those who eat invasive species). Rather than excluding certain foods from their tables, invasivores aggressively tackle the issue head on by facing the enemy eye to eye on their dinner plates. This means, as Ligaya Mishan aptly states, that what otherwise might be merely an epicurean decision, choosing what to have for dinner becomes “a civic duty, a heroic act, even a declaration of war“.

Just a few recommendations to complete your invasivore cookbook library

But before being too quick to declare all out war on invasive species, we need to look over our shoulders. Despite the impressive list of despicable and destructive species taken on by the invasivore movement, there is one species that never seems to be on the menu. This brings to mind Walt Kelly’s cartoon character Pogo who in 1970 uttered this famous line: ‘We have met the enemy and he is us‘ [editors note: this does not necessarily mean that “she” couldn’t be “us” too].

Fittingly, Ligaya Mishan concludes her NY Times piece quoting British ecologist Ken Thompson who considers the most dangerous invasive species to be humans:

With that I will close and wish you happy eating, invasive species or not. But do be looking over your shoulder.