The reintroduction of the otter, one of Britain’s best-loved wild animals, has been a catastrophe for the £1.1billion a year coarse-fishing industry, the Angling Trust claimed yesterday. Dozens of angling clubs, fish farms and fishing lakes say they have been forced out of business because they have been unable to protect their stock from otters.
Owners of fishing lakes are resorting to desperate measures to keep the otters out, including erecting fences, and are pressing the Government to allow a cull to keep numbers to manageable levels. Some experts claim that without special measures the sport of coarse freshwater fishing could be wiped out within five years.
Otters have enjoyed a remarkable renaissance since the 1950s and 1960s when they were all but wiped out by hunting, pollution and loss of habitat. They were reintroduced in the 1980s and 1990s and have exhausted food supplies in many places. Now they have found easy pickings in artificially stocked fishing lakes.
Last autumn the Environment Agency made available £100,000 a year in grants to fisheries towards otter-proof fencing. The fund does not go far when it can cost more than £10,000 to protect a small lake.
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I threw this in for laughs because Tillsonburg has a creek running through the town called the “Otter River”. Not an otter to be found anywhere along it’s entire course although there probably used to be at one time.
Point: Every fall and spring this “creek” fills up with lunkers as salmon and steelhead invade the stream to spawn. No kidding — 20 pounders making their way upstream and into the tiny side creeks and I had a “brainwave” one year. Why not reintroduce otters to our local stream?
I mentioned the idea to a local girl scout leader. She loved it and took off with the suggestion (thanks for that Helen) but when she checked it out the ministry was far less than enthusiastic.
Now I know “the rest of the story” and it’s true. You learn something everyday on the net.
“Heh”…
An Otter river runs through it. Sounds like a good title for another Hollywood movie.
‘No Otters, well there otter bee.’