Britain once had roughly 200,000 coypus after the rodents escaped from fur farms and spread across East Anglia, damaging crops and wetlands. In 1981, the country launched a scientific eradication campaign using intensive trapping, research and population tracking. Six years later, the invasive rodents had almost disappeared from Britain.

Britain once had an estimated 200,000 coypus roaming its wetlands, a population that had grown from animals imported for the fur trade decades earlier. The large South American…

Britain once had roughly 200,000 coypus after the rodents escaped from fur farms and spread across East Anglia, damaging crops and wetlands. In 1981, the country launched a…