Member Article

The results are in!

It’s that time of year when the television channels are full of results being announced… Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor and I’m a Celebrity, but one regional wildlife charity believes it has the results to push all the other results out of the water.

For, Northumberland Wildlife Trust has just announced the results from its first otter survey in 13 years, and they look very impressive.

In June 2015, the Trust received a substantial legacy from Berwick resident and member for over 15 years, Vera Wainwright with a specific request that the gift was applied to an otter project in Northumberland.

Conservationists at the charity were very grateful for the support as the otter is one of the focal species they have worked tirelessly to conserve for many years.

The Trust led the way in otter conservation projects across the country and carried out an almost continuous annual countywide survey for signs of the species between 1990 and 2003, using large numbers of dedicated volunteers. This provided a virtually complete set of presence and absence data for the county and has been used as the yardstick for otter conservation efforts in the region ever since.

It was, in the end, the success of these conservation efforts, with over 80% of sites showing signs of otter presence, and a lack of funding that brought these county-wide otter surveys to a close in 2003.

With a 13 year absence of any survey work, the legacy came at just the right time last July (2015), and it was quickly agreed that a new survey to re-examine the current position of otters within the county would be a wise use of funds, plus the funding would conservationists to explore additional elements, such as current otter ecology through DNA analysis.

In keeping with the spirit of Vera Wainwright’s legacy wishes, the survey was largely volunteer led, with teams re-visiting the historic county survey sites to ascertain otter presence through the identification of otter spraints footprints and other signs.

It was wonderful for the Trust to be involved back in real otter conservation after so many years, and scores of volunteers were trained to identify the signs of otter and differentiate between other wildlife signs likely to be encountered along our rivers and streams.

Volunteer surveyors were allocated survey sites along stretches of the county’s rivers and allowed to visit their sites at their own will, between certain set dates (allowing a settled period of weather for the optimum recovery of otter signs).

Evidence was collected and recorded and, where necessary, returned to the project team for verification; any gaps in the survey map were completed by the project team to attain full coverage of remote sites. This again gave a great opportunity to get back into the field and sample otter activity.

The results from the surveys are very exciting and far above what were expected, given the precariousness the region’s weather. Consistent proof of otter presence was recorded and, across the county, results indicated a slight increase in presence since the last full county survey in 2003.

Specifically 164 sites (91%) from the 180 sites surveyed showed signs of otter presence, an increase of 3%. It is a good indicator of a strong population presence.

The River Tyne had only three negative sites from 80 survey sites, making the catchment 97.6% positive for the presence of otter - an exceptional result.

Mink presence was also recorded throughout the survey and resulted in a 24% level of site presence, an increase of 10% on the previous survey results, where only 14% of sites surveyed mink evidence present.

The Team made a conscious effort during this survey to try and determine some population dynamics through sampling DNA from spraints collected on the River Tyne.

Unfortunately DNA science is not that definitive in certain collection methods, and especially, in relation to otter spraints - it is still not an exact science and although attempts were made to identify markers, no conclusions could be drawn from the samples collected on this occasion. The reason for this was the extreme wet weather over the winter of 2015/16 and the fact that spraints have to be collected very, very ‘fresh’, all conspired to reduce the effectiveness of the effort.

From these results there can be little doubt as to the long term benefits of otter conservation; as part of the rehabilitation of the regions watercourses and improving water quality, this can be seen by the healthy presence of the animal recorded during this survey of Northumberland.

Kevin O’Hara, Northumberland Wildlife Trust Conservation Officer and leader of the Otter Survey said: “The survey shows that along with the continued value of the region’s recreational fisheries and aquatic health, otter presence is still a very valuable tool for indicating the health of the regions’ rivers and streams, its absence from the area would surely point to a decline in that quality.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sue Bishop .