"To date, nutria have been found in wetlands, rivers, canals and other freshwater habitat in Merced, Fresno and Stanislaus counties," CDFW explained in a recent bulletin. "If allowed to establish, nutria will severely impact California’s resources, causing the loss of wetlands, severe soil erosion, damage to agricultural crops and levees and reduced stability of banks, dikes and roadbeds, as they have done in Louisiana, Chesapeake Bay and the Pacific Northwest. Nutria also degrade water quality and contaminate drinking supplies with parasites and diseases transmissible to humans, livestock and pets."
A multiagency Nutria Response Team has been activated, tasked with creating a nutria eradication plan.
"We have no idea how many there are or how they were reintroduced," CDFW spokesman Peter Tira told NPR. "We don’t know if someone set one loose or if there was an isolated population out there that we didn’t know about. But we do know we have to get rid of them."