Coypu, better known in the United States as nutria, is an introduced species in Georgia, and NatureServe flags it as exotic rather than native to the state. Records here are few and scattered through the Coastal Plain of south Georgia, near the blackwater rivers and cypress swamps around Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and the surrounding longleaf pine and sandhill country.
This large South American rodent feeds heavily on marsh plants, and where it settles into Georgia’s blackwater swamps and river backwaters, concentrated feeding on roots and stems can strip vegetation down to open mud. That’s a different kind of pressure than Georgia’s native wetland rodents put on the same marsh, since coypu chew through the root mat that normally holds the bank together.
Records are too sparse in Georgia to show a reliable seasonal pattern, and the state’s small number of sightings makes it hard to say much about when coypu are most active here. What the scattered records do confirm is that this is an established but limited presence rather than a wide population across the state’s wetlands.
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