While the Kenai Peninsula is relatively lucky that the ecosystems here are fairly intact, there are still a handful of invasive species making their way into the streams, fields and gardens here.

Somewhere between the size of a sewer rat and a beaver, with a tail resembling that of an opossum and protruding, nacho cheese-colored teeth, the nutria is both impressively unattractive and highly destructive.

The results of the Plate Watch program only indicated one invasive species in the area, Caprella mutica, otherwise known as the Japanese skeleton shrimp.

Elodea, an aggressive invasive plant, was discovered this month in the lake used by hundreds of floatplanes, raising fears that it will be spread to multiple sites within flying reach.

Last summer while scoping for marine invasive species we found the invasive colonial tunicate, Didemnum vexillum also know as marine vomit.

Alaska does not have opossums, but as of last month Homer had at least one. The mammal, considered an invasive species in Alaska, turned up in a shipping container from Washington state. It later escaped ingniting a flurry of opinions on the fate of this unusual visitor.