Found these beautiful otter prints in one of my Barataria Bay sites!
I’m currently in the middle of analyzing some of my data from studying carnivore distribution in Louisiana, and one of things I’m looking at is which environmental characteristics carnivores respond to- for example, is the number of mice and rats in an area a predictor that coyotes will hang out there? One of the species I’ve recorded at several of my sites is river otter, but when I ran a preliminary analysis last year, none of the environmental characteristics I was paying attention to (like the size of an island or how many crabs I counted on the beach) seemed to matter in whether or not I saw otters or otter tracks there. I’m now redoing my analyses with two years of data, and I’m curious to know if my results will be different. And now I’m also curious about river otters in general- I found them at roughly half of my study sites, but maybe they were more common before? And how are otters in other locations doing? I know that they are sensitive to water pollution, in part because they eat so many fish and aquatic invertebrates, but does the pollution have a direct impact on them as well since they spend so much time in the water? Are there other environmental issues creating problems for otter populations around the world, and are we doing anything about it?
So I have lots of questions about otter conservation, but not really a lot in the way of answers. This month I’ll be trying to answer more of those questions and get a better sense of how well (or not) river otters are doing, plus what we can do to support those populations into the future.