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Issue link: https://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/377644
24 NEBRASKAland • OCTOBER 2014 over, are "perfect habitat for otters along the Platte River," Wilson said. In fact, the otters' affinity for sandpits may prove the primary survey method the Commission has used to track river otters to be unreliable, Wilson said. For decades, biologists have looked near bridges for the distinctive tracks otters leave in snow. The playful critters run for a few steps and then slide on their bellies, often up to 15 feet, and repeat the process to get where they need to go, leaving a Morse-code like trail of dots and dashes in their wake that is easy to spot. Wilson said research in northern states had found otters don't move as often in the winter, especially when it's cold. As he suspected, the same held true for Nebraska otters. Some never left the sandpit, or even came above the ice, for weeks. "It is interesting when you go there in person, day after day for a month, and you can detect an otter under the ice with your telemetry equipment and you know it's right there, and there's fresh snow and there's no tracks. No evidence of it whatsoever. Nothing," Wilson said. With a smorgasbord of fish at their doorstep, otters have no reason to leave lakes or sloughs. An efficient predator that some have called "water wolves," otters have little trouble catching fish slowed by cold. This was plainly illustrated by a female that didn't move more than 100 yards from her den site in an ice-covered sandpit during an overnight tracking session. A month later, she moved 6 miles during an overnight tracking session, the most recorded by any of the animals studied. Apart from winter, the study found otters do indeed put on some miles in search of food, a mate, a natal den, or, in the case of dispersing otters, a new home range. How mobile the animals are was illustrated early in the reintroduction program. A male otter trapped in Idaho and released on the Calamus River in November 1987 was caught in a trap set for beaver on the Platte River in Douglas County 33 days later, 201 river miles away. Another male released on the South Loup River in Custer County in March of 1987 was trapped a little more than a year later in the Missouri River near Herman, Missouri, 700 miles downstream. Sometimes an otter's trip up or down river took them back to the same den site. But otters are opportunistic and will den up wherever one can be found. A study in Idaho documented a single otter's use of 88 different den sites. The 18 otters tracked in Wilson's study were found in 127 unique dens, and undoubtedly used more. Two male otters researchers were tracking left the study area. Researchers weren't able to locate one until they flew the river in an airplane and found it briefly near Columbus, 92 miles from where it was captured, before it disappeared again. Another set Kent Fricke releases a river otter into a slough south of Wood River. Fricke had trapped it in the same location a day before and transported it to Lincoln where a radio transmitter was surgically implanted. PHOTO BY ERIC FOWLER