Anglers Want Otter Cull...

[Worms]

We may be getting there now but after the legal reintroduction Otters would suddenly appear in areas where they should not be found and a long way from the original areas they were introduced to, perhaps it was magic or the Cormorants giving them a lift. Such reclamation of areas emptied of them perhaps by man and most likely by farmers and their chemical scientific advisers. However the Eels being the main stay the Otter diet have not returned and there you have the real problem.

As well as re-introducing otters a lot of riverine habitat was improved (and had been for years) the migration of otters into suitable habit is not magic it's called clever management and knowing the target animal. Eels haven't been the staple diet for otters on many rivers for years and, as otters are equally adept at catching other fish the lack of eels is not a problem for otters at all.

 

For my two pennyworth if the people advocating and being involved in both the breeding and reintroduction of the Otters were intelligent or even moderately intelligent surely the very first thing they should have done is to re-establish the basic foods and food chain of the Otters, a thing they did not even look at or consider in their narrow minded short term approach to get what they had decided they wanted to do, and to do at any cost to anyone else and without thought or consideration to anyone else or anyone Else's rights.

Wrong again. Otters eat fish, they re-introduced otters into areas with fish hence the moaning minnies on about otter culls 'cos "they're eating all the fish". The clue's in the title of the thread!

 

Another thing that puzzles me is where they got the Otters from in the beginning of their breeding program, information about that is very scant on the ground, Oh yes there are vague comments and hints about it but nothing positive or concrete.

Probably, like most natural re-introductions, from orphaned/injured animals in rehabilitation centres.

[JV44]

The Otters i have seen on our local bit of the kennet have been eating /munching on Crays probubly coz they are easier to catch and there are millions of em , that same section of river turnsd up numerous big Pike and Chub every winter so they haven`t eaten all of those yet but we [Rusty and i ] did see a very big pile of very big scales presumeably a big chub on the bank on one of our river swarrys which was presumeably an Otter .... but that is nature aint it .

Regarding the Badger thing they are struggling to dig worms at the mo with the hard ground an all so look elsewhere for food including a Chicken coop of a customer of mine ....well made a mess of that getting in he did but they gotta find what they can find when it`s dry and hard .

The EA have put Otter holts on many of the Thames islands including some well down river in the highly populated urban bits ,Can`t see them colonising those ones myself and a big gap from the ones at the bottom end of the kennet to there but who knows eh?? .