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IUCN/SCC Otter Specialist Group Bulletin Volume 16 Issue 1 Pages 1- 57 (April 1999) From the Chairman's Desk As asked by the IUCN SSC, we (the OSG) have spent the last few months updating the rating of otters for the Red List of Threatened Species. Thanks to Anuil Hussain, Gonzalo Medina, Jan Nel, Jan Reed-Smith, Christof Schenk and Tom Serfass for their valuable contributions. We suggest that IUCN make the changes shown in the table below.
Unfortunately, the response of continental co-ordinators for ‘News’ was low. Gonzalo Medina reported on a monitoring project for Lontra provocax in Chile funded by the Frankfurt Zoological Society and a radio-tracking project on this species funded by the Universidad Austral de Chile and Earthwatch. He rescued a Lontra felina cub from a pulp factory. Additionally he is preparing a meeting of Latin American otter specialists for October this year in Chile and the VIII. International Otter Colloquium to be held in the third week of January 2001 in Valdivia City, Chile. For further information, please contact Gonzalo directly (gmedina@uach.cl). Due to the low response mentioned above, most news arises from Europe. The most important event was the meeting of the European section of the OSG as part of the 3rd European Congress of Mammalogy (ECM3) held in Jyväskylä, Finland between May 29 until June 3, 1999. Three special meetings were dedicated to the otter. In a half-day workshop, more than 20 otter specialists from 12 European countries discussed ‘how to better standardise the standard survey method’. Jerzy Romanowsky and I had evaluated most of the published reports on large spatial otter surveys and could show that there are many methodical questions that need to be answered before a real ‘standard’ for this method is reached. It is planned to publish the results of this evaluation and the recommendations that arose from this workshop in a supplement issue of the OSG Bulletin at the end of this year. A second half-day workshop was dedicated to the conflict ‘otters and fishery’. Marcela Kucerova, who prepared and moderated this workshop, will give a separate report of the outcome in this issue of the Bulletin. The third otter meeting dealt mainly with internal group aspects. I introduced a suggestion for the future structure of the OSG, differentiating co-ordinators, national representatives and members. This suggestion will be discussed with the current continental co-ordinators and the SSC. I will introduce the issue, hopefully in the next issue of the Bulletin. I also presented the state of the Otter Habitat Network Europe (OHNE) project and met with great attention and unanimous approval. Alfred Melissen, the studbook keeper and EEP co-ordinator for Lutra lutra, gave a brief overview of what is going on with this species in captivity. Finally, we discussed the progress of the sub-chapters for Lutra lutra and Europe for the next Otter Action Plan. Because of a report from Poland referring to plans of the Polish authorities to destroy an important river system in this country, the group felt obliged to pass the following recommendation: "Members of the European section of the IUCN/SSC Otter Specialist Group present are deeply concerned about the plan to construct several (up to seven) dams on the lower reach of the Vistula river in Poland. It is feared that such a project should destroy many semi-natural riparian habitats and the functional integrity of a major Polish river catchment, possibly with severe consequences for wildlife diversity. In particular, this project will have serious detrimental effects on the development of a healthy otter population in Poland and will alter migration routes that will allow Eastern European otters to re-colonise Western Europe, where this animal is presently rare or extinct." A special otter excursion to the field station of the University of Jyväskylä in Konnevesi, organised by Gilbert Ludwig and supported by the Finish Ministry of Environment (thanks to Ulla-Maija Liukko and Bo Storrank), gave participants the opportunity to see some Finish otter habitats and to discuss the situation of the otter in this country. Hunting law presently allows the issuing of permits to fishpond owners for killing otters. Of the 45 permits handed out last season (Nov. '98 - Apr. '99) only a part was really used to kill an otter. The same situation is expected for the next season. Most participants agreed that this may be acceptable, especially in the light of the habitat situation in Finland (more than 180.000 lakes of more than 500 m2!), and in comparison to the losses by traffic accidents or in fish nets (approximately 100 otters per year). However, participants also reminded the Finish authorities of their great responsibility to maintain this important ‘population bridge’ between the Baltic and the Scandinavian otter populations and recommended evaluating the development of the Finnish otter population, and the effects of otter killings, continuously. On the periphery of the congress, those members of the ‘Reintroduction Advisory Committee’ (RAC) who joined the ECM3 had a meeting to discuss the working methods of this group. The RAC was established as part of the European section of the OSG at the last International Otter Colloquium in Trebon as the group is deeply concerned about the increasing number of otter release projects in Europe that do not follow IUCN reintroduction guidelines. I asked Addy de Jongh (contact: info@aqualutra.nl) to act as the secretary of this committee. He will prepare a catalogue of the minimum preconditions that should be met by otter release projects by September. This catalogue will form the basis for the evaluation work done by the RAC. All European OSG members are asked to contact Addy as soon as they become aware of a planned release project and to inform their governmental authorities of the existence of the RAC. Looking back on the busy days of Jyväskylä, my personal opinion is that we did a good job and that the meeting represents one of the most effective we ever had. Unfortunately, the number of participating otter people and countries represented was lower than expected. Nevertheless, I wish to thank those colleagues who joined the meeting and for their valuable contributions to the discussions. Beside this great international event in Finland, two other meetings of otter people took place this spring. On the 25th February, participants from Finland, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany and the USA joined a three day seminar on ‘keeping otters in captivity’, held at the OTTER-ZENTRUM in Germany. Further, in March, more than 20 otter and nature conservation specialists from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and Great Britain met at the Dutch Otterpark for a seminar on ‘otter promoting measures’. A report of this meeting, which was part of the nature conservation activities of the North Sea Commission of the European Union, is available at the Otterpark Auqalutra (contact: info@aqualutra.nl). Over the past months, I have been observing the correspondence done via the mail-list network of the OSG very carefully. One of the conclusions was that there are many research projects underway of which many people in the ‘otter scene’ are not aware. Therefore, I decided that it could be useful to develop a platform where all research projects can be posted. This could become a useful source of information for ‘who is doing what’, an important link for co-operation of people involved in similar topics, and a helpful tool to avoid repeating work. Another positive aspect of such a database can be the distribution of information of ‘who his looking for which kind of samples’, giving people who collect dead otters (from the wild or from captivity) an idea of what is needed when they do post-mortem examinations. There could be two options of how to realise this idea: (1) a listing in each issue of the OSG Bulletin, or (2) ask Bob Fetterman to include such a platform on the ‘otternet’ homepage to enable all people to update and to study this database continuously. Please let me know what your opinion is, if you would be prepared to contribute to this database, and which option you would prefer. Finally, I want to remind all authors of sub-chapters of the Otter Action Plan to send their manuscripts as soon as possible. Most country reports for Europe have already arrived and the sub-chapters on biology and conservation for Lutra lutra are almost finished. However, for most other continents and otter species, there is a great lack of manuscripts. Claus Reuther |
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