The River Otter's Remarkable Comeback

Otters seem to be doing quite well in town centres in the UK, along with more usual suspects: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/12/otter-ci...

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JimDabell 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A similar thing happened here in Singapore. Otters were endangered, but after the government worked to clean up the waterways, they came back. They are now thriving, to the point where my condo has signs up saying “What to do when you encounter otters” [0] because occasionally they come in and raid our fish pond.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/pLH5gNj

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jmspring 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

River Otters have been pretty prevalent in the San Juan Islands. I've not heard of issues with them there. I more hear negative impacts - going after chickens/etc; aggressive; things like that.

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blululu 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Finally some good news. I had no idea the Ohio Department of Wildlife had such an outstanding role in the recovery in the Great Lakes region. River otters are really interesting creatures.

Humboldt State supports an active citizen science project to observe and document river otter populations in the ~watershed of Humboldt Bay in Northern California. It's a cool model for engaging with the community to help protecting its natural resources. I could easily imagine similar resources in other regions. * https://hsu.reclaim.hosting/NorthCoastOtters/

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xrd 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You are close by Oregon. Do you have insight into why it has been so hard to get Otter to return to the Oregon coast?

Some context:

https://www.opb.org/article/2024/07/03/sea-otters-spotted-of...

	▲	blululu 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sea otters and River Otters are quite different species and they live in very different habitats. My understanding is that Sea Otters don't really travel very far. They have serious predator and there are large gaps in kelp Forrests so they ~stick a kelp bed that they like and live there. River otters in contrast are ~the apex predator of a river and have a pretty extensive range. A river otter traveling 100 miles is not uncommon. Sadly the sea otter populations were decimated by Russian and later American hunters in the 19th century and never really recovered. My understanding (limited to California) is that the southern sea otter was thought to be extinct until they found a population in Big Sur. They have since been slowly trying to expand its range north, but 80 years on and they have not gone much farther than the Northern end of the Monterrey bay. I suspect that with enough time and patience the Sea Otter will slowly be reintroduced along the entire coast, but it will take a while.

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egeozcan 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The main character of the stories I tell my son is an otter. They are very cute and resilient animals, was surprised to hear that they were, too, once endangered.

There are also some YouTube channels that share the days of some otters in captivity, not sure about how I feel about that.

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rglover 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is one of the most hopeful and exciting things I've read in years.

	▲	telesilla 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The otter's curiosity makes it easy to have sympathy for. Hope their numbers grow back strong.

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pfdietz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Also seeing minks and fishers.

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enochthered 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Environmental activists rescued some mink and released them in a river by my parents house.

Within a couple of years they had completely wiped out the local moorhen population.

Nature is complicated

	▲	ChrisMarshallNY 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Minks are really effective hunters. I think I remember reading about some anti-fur activists releasing hundreds of minks from a fur factory, and they caused havoc in the area. May have been in the UK. It was a while back.