Otters

Tue 2 Apr 2019, 12:50

I've received this today from BBOWT.

Morning Jenny

As water voles have recently been recorded nearby, we do co-ordinate a mink raft on the Mill Stream as part of our water vole conservation work. The raft is on private land and is monitored by the homeowner. Great news that you’ve had otter sightings, with otters doing well in Oxfordshire we are always aware of the potential for them to visit the mink rafts. They do fairly frequently visit the rafts and like to leave their spraint on top, less commonly they will enter the tunnel on the raft and leave their footprints in the clay tracking pad. I have attached our guidance on using mink rafts, which we provide to anybody we work with to monitor and trap mink and which explains how the rafts work. The rafts are usually in monitoring mode with no trap in place but when signs of mink are detected and the clay tracking pad comes out we have a ‘belt and braces’ approach to ensure that otters do not get trapped. These are the mink rafts we use, as you can see they have upright dowels at the tunnel entrance to restrict the size so that otters cannot enter. We also provide traps such as these that have inbuilt otters guards (i.e. added rows of mesh at the trap entrance which restricts the size and makes it too small for otters to enter). Due to their smaller size, there is always the possibility that an otter cub could enter a trap although to my knowledge, in the 11 years that I have been managing the water vole project, this has never happened. For this reason through, and also to protect other species such as water voles and polecats, we always use live-capture traps rather than lethal traps so that an animal can be positively identified as a mink rather than an otter or other species, before it is dispatched. We make all our mink trappers aware of the differences between the species and of the legal protection afforded to otters.

We log all our traps with the Environment Agency and regularly liaise with their technical specialist, Graham Scholey, who is also chair of the UK Otter BAP steering group. Graham is certainly not complacent about risks to otters and has approved our use of these rafts and traps.

I hope that has gone some way to re-assuring you but do let me know if you have any further queries. It’s good to know that local people are looking out for the otters and I hope you all enjoy your otter spotting- having yet to see an otter in Oxfordshire despite regularly recording their signs, I am rather jealous!

Best wishes

Julia

Julia Lofthouse

Mammal Project Manager

Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust