NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: https://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/377644
OCTOBER 2014 • NEBRASKAland 19 ometimes efforts to restore wildlife populations decimated by habitat loss or overharvest by the pioneers who settled this country succeed, and sometimes they don't. The reintroduction of the northern river otter to Nebraska and other Midwestern states that were, for the most part, devoid of this playful mammal for much of the past century is one of these success stories, with recovery in several states rising to the point of allowing harvest for fur. Extirpated by 1920 in Nebraska, recent studies and nearly three decades of surveys to track the range and population expansion of river otters following reintroduction efforts that began here in 1986 have found otters swimming in nearly all of our major rivers. The growth has been so successful, that the river otter could soon be removed from the list of Nebraska's threatened species. History Prior to Euro-American settlement, river otters were common throughout North America, with the exception of Mexico and parts of the arid southwest. They were often mentioned in the log books of trading companies, caught by trappers in search of beavers but happy to add valuable otter pelts to their take. Trappers took as many as 65,000 otter pelts in 1800, but as the fur trade, settlers and the associated development moved west, otter numbers plummeted and by 1904, fur companies bought only 4,500. Unregulated trapping, not just of otters, but of beavers, which otters depend on for den sites, was the main cause of the demise of otters though much of its range, including Nebraska. Most were gone before rivers and streams were dammed or channelized, further altering their habitat. In other states, water pollution caused both by industrial waste and increased runoff resulting from agricultural development, affected otters directly and indirectly, poisoning them and decimating fish populations. Until modern times, the last confirmed reports of otters in Nebraska were a dead male found in 1916 in Lincoln Creek in Seward County and tracks found in 1918 on a Republican River tributary in Phelps County. By the middle of the 20th century, the species was extirpated or rare in 14 other Midwestern states and occupied less than three-fourths of its historic range. Efforts to restore river otters began in 1976 and by 1998, 21 states, 10 in the Midwest, had reintroduced 4,018 otters to their former range. Colorado was among the first states to participate in the program, and work there may have led to the end of a 60-year absence of the species in Nebraska. A female otter trapped in 1977 on Sappa Creek, a Republican River tributary in Furnas County, may have come from Colorado, or she may have been part of a previously undetected remnant population. Four other confirmed otter reports came on the Republican between 1980 and 1985. In January of 1986, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission joined the reintroduction effort. Its work would have started sooner, but it wasn't until the 1984 creation of the Wildlife Conservation Fund, which receives contributions from Nebraskans through their state income tax return, that funding was available. The first otter, an individual provided by Idaho, was released on the South Loup River in Custer County in January of 1986. By 1991, 159 otters, most acquired from Louisiana or Alaska, had been released there and at six other sites on the Platte, North Platte, Calamus, Cedar, Elkhorn and Niobrara rivers. Like other predators, young otters disperse to find new, unoccupied habitat when they leave their parents. To track this expansion, Commission biologists have used reports of accidentally trapped otters, road kills, photographs taken by individuals in the field or trail cameras – "anything we could get that proved otters were present in an area," said Sam Wilson, furbearer program manager for the This is one of Audubon's most dramatic images, and one he duplicated in oil and sold copies in England and the U.S. The more appropriate name is river otter, as it is mostly found near rivers. S SAM WILSON PHOTO BY BOB GRIER