Wealden Times | WT167 | January 2016 | Health & Beauty supplement inside

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The
Green
Goddess
Penny Kemp
shares her tips
for taking
care of the
natural world
FreeImages.com/Marieke Kuijpers
The European otter, or to give it its splendid Latin
name Lutra lutra, is part of the family Mustelids,
which are the same family as badgers, stoats and
weasels. The young are called cubs, their burrows called
holts and they communicate by whistling to each other.
The otter used to be a common sight in our rivers but,
unless you are of retirement age and beyond, I doubt that
you have seen an otter in the wild and certainly not in the
past few years in the south east. The widespread use of
organochlorine pesticides in the past century, which then
leached into our rivers, wiped out most of the otters and,
by the 1960s, they had virtually vanished from these shores
bar Wales and Scotland and a few remote places in the West
Country and Northern England.
A survey of 2940 sites, all known to have been home to
otters previously, was carried out between 1977 and 1979.
The surveyors found otters in just over five per cent of the
sites. The fourth otter survey carried out between 2000 and
2002 brought welcome news: more than 36 per cent of the
sites showed signs of otters returning and, in the fifth survey
carried out in 2009 and 2010, the figure had risen to 60
per cent with otters reported back in every English county
except Kent. Then, in 2011, the Environment Agency
reported sighting at least two otters in Kent in the River
Medway and the River Eden.
The otter’s return is a success story for those who have
campaigned to clean up our rivers and for legislation to
prevent the use of damaging and dangerous pesticides.
Our rivers are the healthiest they’ve been for over twenty
years and the otter, which is at the top of the food chain,
indicates how successful all those involved in
otter conservation have been.
Lastly, if ever you are lucky enough to see an otter in
the wild, please let the Wildlife Trust know. Or, if you
would like to increase your chances of seeing an otter,
environmental organisations are often looking to recruit
volunteers to help with their survey work.
www.wildlifetrusts.org
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