In North America’s Great Lakes region, river otters are coming back from the brink thanks to decades of effort on both sides of the border.
River otters (Lontra canadensis) once moved almost everywhere in this basin. They swam with ease, hunted with precision and thrived in backwaters and bays thick with vegetation. But by the mid-20th century, they had vanished from the state of Ohio and become scarce across most of the watershed. The reasons stacked up quickly. Over-trapping for fur. Pollution that loaded fish with PCBs and other toxins. Wetlands drained for farms and cities. Rivers and streams straightened, dammed, stripped bare. By the 1970s, the silence spoke volumes: the otter was gone, and with it an apex predator vital to the food chain.
The comeback In 1986, Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) began reintroducing river otters to streams they had not seen in decades. Over the next seven years, 123 otters from Louisiana and Arkansas were released into rivers selected for their clean water, abundant food and protective cover. They weren’t the only ones bringing otters back. In the late 1990s, New York’s River Otter Project relocated 279 otters – drawn from the Adirondacks, Catskills and Hudson Valley – to 16 sites across western and central New York state. Many of those waterways had been without otter populations longer than most residents could remember. In Ontario, biologists have documented otters recolonizing areas such as Algonquin Provincial Park and the north shore of Lake Superior, where they had been scarce for much of the 20th century. Across western Canada, populations have rebounded more broadly. Aside from rare remnant areas on Prince Edward Island, river otters are now considered stable or expanding in nearly every province and territory.
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What's not to love about river otters?
This is great news.
