The North American river otter has a dramatic history in West Virginia.
This story was originally published in the February 2016 issue of Wonderful West Virginia.
Written by Mikenna Pierotti
If the story of the otter in West Virginia were a play, it would be a tragicomedy in three parts. The first part would be set in Appalachia before European settlers began trickling in—the backdrop an idyllic river bend in a quiet swath of forest. The protagonist and, arguably, the comic relief, would be the North American river otter, Lontra canadensis. With its sleek fur, loping gate, whiskered muzzle, and penchant for playfully sliding down riverbanks, chirping and humming all the way, it would steal the show from the first scene.
This character is easily mistaken for a more intimidating creature, says Rich Rogers, West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (DNR) furbearer project coordinator. “When you see a bunch of otters come up out of the water all at once, especially when the young are small, it’s easy to mistake them for something else. You don’t know whether they’re a ball of eels or snakes.”
Smart and adaptable, otter-like animals have existed for at least the last 30 million years. Part of the Mustelidae family, the otter’s distant cousins in West Virginia are weasels, minks, and fishers. Worldwide there are 13 distinct otter species. The 100-pound sea otter is the largest. The 10-pound Asian short-clawed otter is the smallest. North American river otters weigh anywhere from 11 to 30 pounds and, before the 1900s, claimed nearly the entire North American continent as their domain, from coast to coast and northern Mexico to the Arctic Circle.
Rogers says their opportunistic feeding habits are one reason they were able to thrive. “They eat mostly bottom-feeding fish and shellfish. But they do eat small mammals, insects, amphibians, and carrion they find out on the bank. Basically, they’ll eat what they find in and around water,” he says. Game fish are rarely taken when slower, easier prey is available. But if an otter can corner a fat trout, you bet it’s on the menu.
River otters also keep flexible schedules. They can be nocturnal or crepuscular—active at night and twilight— during spring and summer but can switch to daytime hunting in winter when the temperatures drop.
They also have few predators in the wild. Birds of prey and other land carnivores can’t follow otters into the water, where they can swim close to six miles per hour, dive 30 feet, and hold their breath for eight minutes. And otters can be as ferocious as their wolverine and badger cousins. “A coyote or bobcat might hunt one occasionally, but it’s rare,” Rogers says.
Other adaptations that help otters stay on top of the food chain are physical. Their streamlined, two- to three-and-a-halffoot bodies might move comically on land—like an inchworm with a spring in its step—but, coupled with webbed feet, ear and nasal passages that can close when submerged, and long, rudderlike tails, otters move faster and more efficiently underwater than many other creatures. And those long whiskers? Perfectly suited for sensing tiny animals in dim waters.
One of the otter’s most distinct qualities—its seemingly insatiable curiosity and love of play—might also be adaptive. Whether it’s nipping at beaver tails, playing fetch with turtles, or skating merrily across a frozen river, the otter is always on the move. A family group can travel miles up and down a river in a single day looking for food. These activities may help to solidify bonds between family members and confound predators.
River otters are more social than many other mustelids. “The males are territorial, but the family units are pretty cohesive. They stay together for many months. You’ll often see females and young in particular,” Rogers says.
Female otters can delay pregnancies as long as 10 months so their litters of one to six babies, called kits, will appear when food and good weather are plentiful. Kits are born in abandoned beaver huts, old animal dens, or dry cavities along rivers. Although otters love water, they spend a generous amount of time rubbing and grooming their fur and their family members’ fur to keep it dry and oiled.
Otters mature slowly, so mothers are attentive and protective, feeding babies diets of rich milk for at least the first two months. Surprisingly, these semi-aquatic mammals don’t instinctively know how to swim. Kits get swimming lessons once their two-layered, water repelling adult fur grows in.
The river otter’s story, one of sociable playfulness, changes around the dawn of the 20th century. Enter: humans. We play both antagonist and supporting cast in this production. Although Native Americans hunted otters for pelts and meat, it wasn’t until the fur trade took off on the colonial market in the 19th century that otter populations really took a nosedive. Though, Rogers says, unregulated hunting wasn’t the main culprit behind the otter’s disappearance in much of its historic range. “Everyone says trapping first, habitat second. It was actually the other way around. Unregulated trapping was a problem. People were poor and they could get good money from pelts. But habitat destruction, coupled with trapping, was the real cause,” he says.
In West Virginia, habitat destruction primarily meant unregulated logging. By some estimates, loggers harvested enough timber in the state between 1879 and 1912 to build a boardwalk to the moon and back. “And when you cut timber around water, you reduce cover and create all sorts of runoff. Muddy streams don’t produce food for otters,” he says. “Once the aquatic habitat became degraded, the otter population shrank.” And shrank.
West Virginia was one of the last states to see the otter disappear. State officials declared the species protected in 1925, but by 1950 only a smattering of river otters struggled to survive along remote rivers and streams, hardly enough to sustain a population.
Then, in the early 1980s, with stream pollution decreasing and logging and hunting already regulated, state wildlife agencies started talking about bringing the otter back. “But to bring them back we needed to reintroduce really healthy animals into really healthy habitats,” Rogers says.
DNR personnel collected 245 healthy river otters from Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Louisiana, gave them quick check ups, and released them along 14 major rivers in the state from 1984 to 1997. It wasn’t long before otters were whistling and barking their way back into the landscape. “Today they are found pretty much all over West Virginia. There are only a few counties where we haven’t seen them yet,” Rogers says. “The original release sites, because they were prime otter habitat, have really taken off and done well. But their range has expanded pretty dramatically.”
The third act of the otter’s tale, one that many wildlife organizations and fur trappers across the state hope will continue, began in 2012 when the first river otter trapping season—November 7 to February 29— in West Virginia in nearly a century officially opened. The limit is one otter per trapper per season. “We are averaging about 200 otters harvested per year. That’s about three per county,” Rogers says.
He says many trappers aren’t targeting otters specifically, but the curious creatures can get caught in beaver traps. Monitoring the population closely and teaching trappers how to harvest beavers with less danger of capturing otters are his main goals. Preserving the otters’ habitat and keeping water sources clean and healthy is another priority. “They were brought back to the state in part to allow a harvest for the trapping public. We wouldn’t have started a trapping season until we were sure the population could sustain it.”
This careful monitoring is one reason West Virginia was one of the first states to successfully reintroduce river otters. Since 1976 more than 4,000 river otters have been released in 22 states, according to the National Wildlife Federation and, as of 2015, there were river otter trapping seasons in at least 33 states. In West Virginia Rogers is in no hurry to increase the current harvest limit from one per season. “They’re secretive, so if you see one it’s like you’ve seen the holy grail,” he says. “These creatures are a valuable resource. We’ve put so much time and effort into bringing them back, we don’t want to ruin that.”