Bay Area river otters make a comeback

Our friends at the River Otter Ecology Project get a fitting tribute to their hard work and recent publication. Congratulations for making an important difference! They are proud to welcome otter presence back to eight of the nine bay area counties. Since otters are no doubt there because of the recovering fish population and cleaner water, it’s something we should ALL be happy about. We’ve watched ROEP grow from a hint of an idea, to a plan and into a massive success and I couldn’t be happier for them! They are this year’s winner for the John Muir non-profit of the year conservation award, and have always been grand beaver supporters of our efforts and happy to cross pollinate. Check out their new publication and enjoy the recovery for yourself.

I have to admit though, despite all good intentions, when I consider the charmed life otters  lead, with their cheerful beloved antics and their lithe fish-eating ways, I can’t help getting jealous. No city ever makes a decision to kill otters and no one gets mad at them for flooding roads or blocking culverts. In California the otter’s biggest threat is accidental trapping if it wanders into a conibear set for a beaver on purpose. Otters rarely get mistakenly attributed in photographs, and people don’t call them pests. Their comeback inspires a ticker-tape parade, and beavers are greeted with pitchforks and torches. It can feel like beavers are the red-headed step child of the aquatic mammal world. And for that matter, why didn’t our three beaver prevalence papers make the news? The three were monumentally hard work overturning 70 years of thought!

And then I read this:

    “…we strongly recommend attention to their potential role as a keystone species in the San Francisco Bay Area”

Could that be true? I knew of course that sea otters were a keystone species, because of their diet of sea urchins, which otherwise deplete kelp forests, where so much sea life lives. But river otters? Was nothing sacred? Would there be otter keystone charm bracelets next? I went searching around for clues and found this from our old friend Steve Boyle saying it has to do with the role of nutrient exchange:

The river otter has been termed a keystone species because of its role in nutrient transport between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and a sentinel species because of its sensitivity toenvironmental contaminants and other disturbances (Bowyer et al. 2003). As such, river otter presence

should be considered an important element in aquatic and riparian ecosystem health in Region 2 habitats potentially suitable for river otters. The existing and additional management efforts described below should help to make river otter populations across Region 2 more widespread and secure.

Oh alright then. Otter poop it is. (Snark Alert: Can’t really imagine what that bracelet would look like?) I hrmphed off to Rickipedia who reminded me not to worry because the thing that makes beavers wondrous is that in addition to being a keystone species they’re also ecosystem engineers. Which is much, much rarer.

So I think it’s time for new graphics, don’t you?

 Now here’s something entirely positive about beavers, Peter Smith’s discussion of their Economic Impact at the recent Scottish Beaver Conference.

And of course, this!