Nutria Eradication and Control Reauthorization Act of 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. HARDER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Huffman for yielding. I thank my friend from Louisiana (Mr. Graves), for his leadership and his sense of style. We are certainly going to miss him and all of the work that he has done to make this critical legislation a reality.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is dead simple. All it does is reauthorize funding to advance eradication efforts for this invasive rodent which is already causing millions of dollars in damage in 18 States including California, Louisiana, and Florida.

These swamp rats threaten our world-class farmland, our critical flood control infrastructure, and our water quality.

With their massive nacho cheese-colored orange teeth, nutria can eat 25 percent of their body weight in vegetation every single day, breaking down our levees and harming our waterways.

To make matters worse, these invasive rats weigh upwards of 40 pounds. One female nutria, to do the math for my friend from Louisiana, can reproduce 200 offspring every single year.

This means that if we don't get this bill done, these nutria will continue to expand and ravage our country, unless the strategic wildlife management plans actually reduce their growth.

This is our last chance to secure 5 additional years of nutria eradication efforts for affected districts across the Nation, and we know that it can work. Our efforts have already shrunk nutria populations across the country. In 2018, the Chesapeake Bay region successfully eradicated nutria from their communities after almost two decades.

We are learning from that in California and Louisiana. This shows that we have the wildlife management techniques that can ensure that we can continue to move forward.

We are reaching a critical point in nutria control efforts. This year alone, we have experienced a 55 percent increase in detected nutria cells, and we are on track to, unfortunately, have a record-breaking year for captive nutria right now.

We must reauthorize these eradication efforts so we can stop the destruction and damage in my district and others like it across the Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to pass this bill to keep our levees, waterways, and agricultural lands safe from these dangerous, invasive swamp rats.

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