Renaissance of the Italian otter

Are otters making their way back into Italy? By Stephanie Sears

"Something is going on," remarks Andreas Kranz with obvious satisfaction. Andreas is an Austrian wildlife ecologist who first monitored the presence of otters in southern Austria in 2004. There, on the outskirts of Villach, the second largest city in Carinthia, fifteen kilometres from the Italian border, he found evidence of otter colonization through the presence of eight spraints left on the inner stone and cement skirting of a bridge. The low height of the bridge offers the otter a cave-like protection against the suburbia surrounding it, and sheltering the faeces from rain and snow gives the surest indication of the animal's presence.

The sweetish, jasmine-like odour of the spraint, often prominently placed on rocks as a territorial mark, is unmistakable. Because the smell is enduring, this aspect of the faeces is considered to determine its age; several of them left at different times in one spot signal a permanent otter settlement. Other significant traces left by this otherwise discreet Mustelid are its five-toed and webbed footprints and the characteristic ‘transverse gallop' and ‘half bound' movement of its short legs.

Mainly nocturnal and a champion at concealment the Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) israrely seen by humans, despite an average weight of eight kgs for a male and five to six kgs for a female and a body length of about one metre. Even in the ankle-deep and crystal-clear water of a small stream, Kranz assures me, the otter can swim undetected by the human eye.

Extinct in North and Central Italy
To make things more difficult for the would-be observer, it has become rare or extinct in much of Western Europe where it used to be common, its presence once spreading uninterrupted all the way to Far East Asia. Until the 1970s it was found all over Italy but today is extinct in all the northern and central part of the peninsula. The remaining populations are found only in the southern provinces of Basilicata, Campania, Puglia, Calabria and a small isolated nucleus in the central southern regions of the Abruzzi and Molise.

Yet its capacity to survive near urban areas when given access to improved environmental conditions such as clean water and sufficient food resources may explain why the otter seems to be on the verge of re-appearing in northern Italy. The Danube Basin, north of Italy, is an important conduit of otter expansion stimulated by a healthier environment and stricter conservation rules than in the past. There appear to be three probable otter gateways to Italy: near Brenner in southwest Austria, in the area between Arnoldstein and Tarvisio more to the east, and further east still, by the river Isonzo (Saca) along the Slovenian-Italian border. Precise routes have yet to be identified, but Andreas Kranz believes that one of the most plausible courses towards Italy would follow the river Drau to the river Gail and on to the Gailitz.

Otters were heavily persecuted in Italy, and also suffered badly from DDT and other chemicals. Photo Credit Stephanie Sears

Beyond the well-watered region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the Venetian lagoon awaits with its favourable sprawl of islets and marshland rich in marine life, a place which the otter once inhabited and may again occupy in two or three decades if nothing disturbs its present expansion.

Who cares?
But why should one care after all? For those who have not been captivated by Henry Williamson's Tarka, the otter and Gavin Maxwell's Ring of bright water the otter may be an unknown quantity and a matter of indifference, particularly in an industrially vital region where everyone and everything is expected to contribute to economic momentum. Certainly, for Italians in their twenties or younger, living in the north and in the centre of Italy the opportunity of glimpsing this animal in open countryside has been nil.

There are several reasons why Italians should greet the reappearance of the otter in their midst with relief and gratitude. It is a creature of exceptional charm. Its appealing physique is accompanied by a remarkable personality and playful vivacity which gives this button-nosed, whiskered and luxuriantly furred little carnivore the magnetism to be a ‘flagship species' and therefore a main focus of Italy's developing nature tourism. It is also considered - despite some disagreement among scientists - to be an ‘umbrella species', an indicator of environmental quality affecting other species, including human beings. Apart from the aesthetic and emotional benefits to humans of this return of wildlife in a densely populated and industrialized part of Italy the reappearance of the otter would also mean that after years of environmental abuse, efforts towards improvement have finally allowed nature to reassert itself.

Water is essential to the otter and it lives equally well near streams, rivers, lakes, ponds and lagoons. It rarely makes its holt (main den) or couch (temporary resting place) further than five to ten metres from water's, using natural cavities, roots or folded reeds along the banks; remaining both close to the safety of its holt and to its main source of food. Its diet consists mainly of fish & eels, but also frogs, snakes and sometimes even small mammals and birds. A rapid metabolism and the need to keep high body temperatures under water give it a voracious appetite. The male has a hunting range of twenty kilometres or more, the female, ten kilometres or more; but the otter will also migrate along waterways to settle a new permanent territory.

The otter's small, comely physique and its adaptable and unthreatening proximity to human settlements would seem to make it an ideal and easy candidate for wildlife preservation in our compact European wilderness. Therefore, its fate has and will continue to give an accurate assessment of the value we place on wildlife and nature in general.

Environmental degradation & hunting
Before environmental degradation led the Italian Eurasian subspecies (Lutra lutra lutra) to extinction in the north of the country, it had already been much diminished by traditional otter hunting with trident and hounds, particularly in the northern regions of Como, Brescia, Cremona, Pavia. Considered a nuisance by fishermen the otter was to be eradicated, its beautiful fur was sold for a profit and in the Veneto its meat was eaten.

A few otters survived in Southern Italy, and their numbers are increasing slowly, but they suffer from being do isolated. Credit Stephanie Sears.

In the 1960s the otter suffered terribly from the heavy use of DDT pesticides(dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) used in agriculture and from PCBs (Polichlorobifenil) found in lubricants, pesticides and plastics, the latter particularly nefarious to the otter's fertility. When the number of otters in Italy plunged and ecologists raised an alarm, hunting became illegal in 1977; but the animal continued to be beaten and trapped sporadically. Though DDTs and PCBs ceased to be used by the mid 1980s, the enduring presence of heavy metals in the water, the cementing of river banks, the damming of rivers affecting water flow and food availability, the growth of the Italian human population in the last half of the twentieth century and the consequent expansion of urban agglomerations, compounded to finish off the otter in northern Italy.

Southern Italy otters hung on
The end of otter hunting and to the use of DDTs and PCBs had, however, given the chance to existing populations in the south to bounce back from the nadir of 150 individuals found in all of Italy between 1993-1996 to an estimated 220 to 260 today, allowing the Italian otter to graduate from ‘critically endangered' (following the criteria of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature) to merely ‘endangered' in 2001. Yet the small groups that survive do so uncertainly as they remain particularly vulnerable to genetic isolation and to discontinuous river networks that keep populations separated.

Isolation
This is the case for the estimated 67 otters found in the Molise region by Anna Loy, professor in Zoology and Animal ecology at the University of Molise and her students, founders of the 'Gruppo Lontra Molise'. Though in Molise human population is relatively sparse and a fair amount of open countryside remains, little of it is officially protected and safe passageways are needed to connect the Molise otter group to the south's larger core. Other significant threats include persistent accusations surviving from the past, such as the perceived competition for fish between anglers and otters, and new dangers such as the increasing number of road kills, each otter casualty having dire effects on their limited numbers.

Action plan
A 2009 National Action Plan details ways to secure the future of the Italian otter, giving priority to three vital aspects of the otter's environment: water quality, restoration of riparian vegetation and measures allowing the otter to cross over or under roads safely. The essential goal of the Action Plan is to re-establish a closer and more harmonious relation between wildlife and human activity.

The otter does not attack domestic animals or livestock and adapts to semi-urban areas, even urban areas, given proper riparian cover. While it has been and is still accused by anglers of catching the larger fish in rivers (an adult otter eats two to three fish a day), the charge is not supported by evidence and ecologists have found that smaller-sized fish in rivers are not the left-over remains of otter banqueting but the natural consequence of cleaner water.

Failed reintroduction
Previous efforts to reintroduce the otter in the Piedmont's Ticino Park failed accidently because otters brought from England proved to be hybrids of Eurasian (Lutra lutra lutra) and Southeast Asian (Lutra lutra barang) subspecies. Some of these otters escaped or were intentionally released from the enclosed area in which they were being kept. To the dismay of otter conservationists individuals may still survive in the wild and it is hoped that they will not reproduce with Eurasian otters coming from across the border. Future attempts to reintroduce Eurasian otters remain an option but since genetic variation among Eurasian otters in Europe is slight, the possibility of the animal's spontaneous return to northern Italy from Austria is favoured by the IUCN.

Whether it be spontaneous or reintroduced, the return of the otter to northern Italy, if proven successful, will not only be the victory of a captivating and long persecuted animal but also a far greater victory for people, which will herald, even in the most densely inhabited and industrialized of regions, a new era of uncontaminated environments and enriching co-habitation between wildlife and human beings.