Facing the coypu: science, rhetoric, and affection in the case of an alien invasive species

During an interview I conducted with Martina, she once, very frustrated, told me: "Giulio non porta malattie, sono tutte bugie quelle che dicono loro". Giulio is a Myocastor coypus, and Martina's pet. She is just one of the various coypu owners I have met during my fieldwork, when I have been researching the social and cultural impacts of the presence of this invasive species in northwest Italy. Martina, as many others, has been struggling with both illegality and contempt due to her decision of adopting a coypu as a pet. The coypu is considered one of the world's most dangerous invasive alien species. In Italy, the legal status of the coypu has been constantly changing to comply with European regulations, and now it is managed through "Piano di gestione nazionale della nutria", which intends to provide a guideline for the management of the control or eradication of coypu colonies in Italy. Among the characteristics that validated its mass eradication – which are related to its environmental impacts — de facto, it seems noteworthy to consider the role of the species as a potential reservoir of diseases, in particular leptospirosis. My intervention aims to spotlight the ambiguities behind the plan of control and eradication of the coypu. Anchoring to my ethnography fieldwork, I will juxtapose some alternative scientific opinions of the problematicity of the rodent — as well as to the proposal of a control method through sterilization (Chiozzi, Venturini 2008) — to an analysis of the rhetoric of political and popular culture on invasive species, and to the emotional ties which some of my interviewers have forged with coypu. I intend to energize to the entanglements that this species generates with social and political dimensions and highlight the clashes that have emerged when biosecurity culture encounters the reality of affection.