May 4, 2002

It might seem a million miles from Tarka country, but otters are returning to Norfolk. Chris Bishop finds out the likeliest places to spot one of our shyest mammals.

SEEN ANY OF MY MATES? Otters may be on the increase after years in decline - but you will still be lucky to spot one of these shy creatures.

Perhaps centuries of persecution have taught them that human beings clumping up the riverbank almost invariably means trouble. It wasn’t so long ago that we looked hell-bent on poisoning and hunting them out of existence, after all.

Whatever the reason for its low profile, the otter is one of the few animals which can live on the fringes of our towns and cities without anyone being any the wiser.

They don’t keep whole neighbourhoods awake with their courting screams or the clang of overturning dustbins like the urban fox.
And they don’t possess quite the same appetite for destruction as the much-maligned mink, which has colonised so many of their once- favoured haunts.

In fact unless you’re an angler or an early-morning dog walker, the chances are you’ll never be in the right place at the right time to see one anyway.

The signs they leave behind are a different matter, if you know what to look for.

Or if you can tell one dropping from another by appearance, texture and smell, not to put too fine a point on it. Otters use their droppings – known as spraints – to mark out their territories.

OTTER WATCH: Steve Henson, Norfolk Wildlife Trust Otters and Rivers project officer on the lookout for these rarely seen river creatures.

Trained volunteers make regular checks at suitable “sprainting sites”, often near to bridges, and pass the information to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust.

But while fish bones found in the droppings can show what otters have been eating, they don’t shine any light on how many otters have left their calling cards at a particular site.

“There’s no working way to calculate numbers, it’s difficult to say how many there are and where they go,” said Steve Henson, the trust’s Anglian Otters and Rivers Project officer.

“We’re in the process of providing a database and drawing up a map of the county. We do know that they’re breeding well and that every major river catchment is now occupied.”

DNA could be used in future, to identify individuals.

More stomach-churning analysis revealed signs of otters at up to 26 per cent of 141 likely locations in Norfolk, which were surveyed during last year’s National Otter Survey. During a previous count, seven years ago, the figure was around 15 per cent.

The eventual aim is to see stocks restored to pre-1960s levels. Between then and the mid-1980s, otters were almost wiped out by pesticides leaching into the rivers and the coarse fish they fed on.

Like birds of prey, their numbers plumetted as the toxins became concentrated at the top of the food chain. Otter hunting, which was stopped in 1978, hardly helped.

The creatures are only believed to have survived on one or two of the remotest reaches of the River Wissey, a fast-flowing tributary of the Great Ouse.

But now they are coming back with a vengeance, thanks largely to a helping hand from the Earsham-based Otter Trust, which began re-introducing the animals to the wild in 1983 and has since released nearly 150 otters.

Philip Wayre, the trust’s founder and chairman, said: “It’s been much more successful than we thought it would be.

“In fact we have been so successful that otters are now back on every river system in lowland England.”

Experts now believe populations have recovered sufficiently for the re-introduction programme to be put on hold for now.

“Rivers I would term as strongholds for otters at the moment include the Wissey, Wensum, Ant, Waveney, Bure, Glaven and possibly the Little Ouse,” said Steve Henson.

“In general they are now spread right across Norfolk and the population is still expanding.”

Heartening news, perhaps – except for some fishery owners who run stillwaters close to parts of the Wensum and Waveney, whose stocks have been raided.

“The winter before last when water levels were higher there were a lot of reported incidents of them taking carp, it’s a controversial issue,” Steve admitted.

There’s no denying fat coarse fish, lying dormant in a clear gravel pit, represent a far easier meal than winkling out something a 10th of the size from the chocolate-coloured torrent that is the Wensum in flood.

Whether otter-proofing in the form of fencing of some sort could solve the problem remains to be seen. The animals’ agility and swimming abilities mean that task is a demanding one.
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