For decades, the use of real animal pelts in fashion has been seen as the polar opposite of eco-friendliness. Extinction issues, inhumane treatment of animals and wildlife sustainability have all been part of the larger conversation around fur coats and accessories.

However, there’s a new animal that is blurring the lines of the issue. Nutrias, semiaquatic rodents that average 12 pounds in weight (5.4 kg), have reproduced at such speed that their large numbers have been decimating the wetlands of Louisiana, according to MSNBC. First introduced into Louisiana in the late 1800s from South America, the nutria population growth has been damaging to the ecology of the state. Now, the nutria are feeding so rapidly and upsetting the delicate ecological balances of the wetlands so much that the state of Louisiana is has been paying incentives to approved applicants who trap or shoot nutria.

The program is working; in the early part of the decade, tens of thousands of acreage in Louisiana was damaged by excessive nutria feeding; in the past year, less than ten thousand acres of the coast were damaged. Louisiana’s wetlands are now getting the needed opportunity to heal and grow without disturbance from massive numbers of nutria.

Trappers are allowed to sell the nutria pelts, and the ecologically friendly nature of the pelts has been highlighted in some recent fashion choices. Both Oscar de la Renta and Michael Kors have used nutria fur recently; de la Renta created a nutria vest, and Kors used nutria fur to line the inside of raincoats.

Whether real fur will take off again in the fashion world remains a larger question, but proponents do note that real fur is renewable and sustainable when harvested in the appropriate quantities, while fake fur is usually a petroleum product, therefore bringing a host of other issues to the table.

So where should we go from here? Should fur from animals like nutria continue to be used in fashion?