That’s basically because the USGS has the responsibility to conduct research on a lot of natural resources, issues, including invasive species like nutria.
Well, that and the other stuff they track moves in geologic scales, so they’ve got lots of free time: “Yep, the mountain’s still where we left it yesterday, how’s 'bout we go track some oversize rats again?”
Ideally. When that kind of stuff is moving in real-time, it’s usually because things have gone completely to hell. I bet the nightmares of USGS personnel generally involve Yellowstone…
Beavers get very angry if you get between them and their wood.
Obviously, the USGS has cut off all of their tails.
Perhaps it was one of Stephen Hawking’s aliens?
Huh. And one of those nutria pockets looks like it’s right around Minneapolis-town, too - at least it’s not far.
This is almost as good as the time I saw a stag running down a busy, divided road outside UWM in Milwaukee. Glad it didn’t eat you, MOL.
The Biological Resources Division of the Geological Survey (I know it’s weird) got its start in the Clinton administration, when Clinton and Babbit (Sec. of Interior) decided to move all of the biological research out of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Park Service and some other smaller Interior agencies (like the Bureau of Mines, for example) into one new agency. This was because all of those agencies have agendas and mandates that in theory could bias science. The idea was to make a new agency that would be modelled after USGS, a highly respected paragon of unbiased research. This agency was to be called the National Biological Survey (because USBS sounds bad). Congress did not like that, because it was all done without consulting them, and so they threatened to redline the agency (cut out all funding). There was also a lot of unfounded hyperbole put out by those trying to make trouble for the administration that professed that this new agency would be out surveying everybody’s private land and looking for endangered species so that they could control what you do with your land. For this reason, the short-lived agency’s name was changed to the National Biological Service. This still did not sufficiently mollify congress, so as a compromise measure the entire new agency was rolled into the USGS, where it became the Biological Resources Division. Oddly, it works pretty well, most of the time. The original intent of the Clinton administration has been achieved, probably with somewhat less overhead than would have been required with a totally new agency.
Oh, and although beaver is in my opinion the most likely culprit, if this does happen to be a nutria, there are people who would be very interested in that. Nutria do terrible things to wetlands, and they can live that far north.
Yeah, they’ve become a real scourge in Seattle and Washington state.