Nutria Eradication and Control Reauthorization Act of 2025
Floor Speech
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Ms. ANSARI. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this bill, which would reauthorize the Nutria Eradication and Control Act through fiscal year 2030, to ensure that Maryland, Louisiana, and California can manage and eradicate this destructive, invasive species.
Nutria are an invasive species of large, semiaquatic rodents found in coastal wetlands along the Gulf of Mexico, the East Coast, California, and other wetland areas within the United States.
Nutria were initially introduced into the United States in the 1930s for fur production. However, their rapid breeding and destructive tendencies toward native wetland vegetation have led to extensive erosion, displacement of native species, breached levees, and the introduction of diseases and parasites that threaten humans, livestock, and pets.
These actions pose severe threats to our national wetlands, which are essential habitats for waterfowl and other wildlife and act as buffers for extreme weather events.
According to estimates, if measures had not been adopted to control and eradicate nutria in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay, nutria could have destroyed 17 percent of the bay's marshes in just a few years.
In 2003, the Nutria Eradication and Control Act authorized the Secretary of the Interior to provide financial assistance to Maryland and Louisiana for a program to eradicate or control nutria and restore marshland damaged by nutria.
In 2020, Congress passed Representative Harder's bill to amend the Nutria Eradication and Control Act to include California, which faced a rapidly expanding breeding population of nutria in the San Joaquin Valley and adjacent areas. That bill also gave the Secretary of the Interior discretion to provide funding to States adversely affected by growing nutria populations through fiscal year 2025. This bill before us today would extend that authority to fiscal year 2030.
The Nutria Eradication and Control Act has significantly reduced nutria populations in all three States. In Maryland, nutria were entirely eradicated from Chesapeake Bay in 2022. In California, captures peaked in 2020 and have been steadily declining, but they are not yet fully eradicated.
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Ms. ANSARI. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Harder), the sponsor of the bill.
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Ms. ANSARI. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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