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.
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https://hsu.reclaim.hosting/NorthCoastOtters/
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.
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.
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.
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/
Some context:
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/07/03/sea-otters-spotted-of...
[0] https://imgur.com/a/pLH5gNj
There are also some YouTube channels that share the days of some otters in captivity, not sure about how I feel about that.
Within a couple of years they had completely wiped out the local moorhen population.
Nature is complicated