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IUCN/SCC Otter Specialist Group Bulletin Volume 16 Issue 2 Pages 58 - 110 (October 1999) From the Chairman's Desk More than 400 e-mails, faxes or letters since the last issue of this bulletin - this is my personal balance of the efforts to revise the Otter Action Plan (OAP). Step by step we are going ahead but, unfortunately, these steps are too small. As is visible from Table 1, the interim results are quite different for the three main chapters. For chapter 1 ('Introduction to the biology of the subfamily Lutrinae') the drafts for all three African species and one Asian species (L. perspicillata) have arrived and the chapter for L. lutra is already almost completely revised. This latter species is also the only one (of 13!) where a draft for chapter 2 ("Conservation") is completely written. Thanks to the initiative of Janice Reed-Smith and Sheila Sykes-Gatz, drafts for the sub-chapters on L. canadensis and P. brasiliensis in captivity are also available. However, that's all I have got so far for one of the most important parts of the OAP! Thanks to the great efforts of Jan Nel, Dave Rowe-Rowe, and Hélène Jacques, the drafts of the status reports for nearly all the African countries have already been completed. This is true, unfortunately, for only half of the European, and a quarter of the Asian country reports. Further, more than 12 months after sending out the manuscript instructions, not a single line has arrived to date from Latin America, North America, and for the sea otter! But this is not my only pain. Twelve months ago I invited, as decided in Trebon, several people to participate in the preparation of chapter 4 ('Review of current research techniques'). The intention of this chapter was to give an overview of study designs and research techniques already used in otter research - independent of the otter species or the continent. The target was to offer people starting work on otters ideas for studies, help them avoid mistakes in study designs (already done by others), and to summarise examples from other, well studied, otter species, such that information could be collected for otter species which have not been studied so intensively. All regional co-ordinators of the OSG have been asked to nominate specialists for the ten topics of this chapter, additional to those who were nominated at the last Otter Colloquium in Trebon. However, it seems that something went wrong - so far, only two (4.8 and 4.10) of the ten sub-chapters are being worked on. Having edited several books, I am not in a panic about this situation, quite the contrary. I fully expected these problems, knowing that it would be a great challenge to bring more than 100 authors from all over the world "under one umbrella". First, therefore, I want to thank all the people who have already contributed to this important project of the OSG. Second, I want to remind all the people who have promised to contribute to the OAP to keep their promises - and to send their manuscripts immediately. Thirdly, I ask all otter specialists to have a look at table 2 and decide whether they can contribute to one of the topics of chapter 4, or if they are prepared to act as a co-ordinator for one of the sub-chapters which are not being worked on so far.
Asking people for manuscripts, reminding authors of deadlines, and revising manuscripts of the OAP, has kept me so busy over the last few months that some other projects I had planned for this year had to stay in the background. I hope for your understanding over this. The only new information I have from the European 'Reintroduction Advisory Committee' (RAC) is the completion of a legal opinion from the University of Bremen on 'the preconditions for the release of otters on the basis of EU and other international legal regulations'. Unfortunately, it is in German and we have to find someone who is prepared to translate these very interesting 36 pages into English. Apart from that, we are still waiting for the draft of the 'catalogue of minimum preconditions' that should be met by otter release projects, which Addy de Jongh agreed to prepare. We are also waiting for the completion of the 'husbandry guidelines for Lutra lutra', and I am happy to hear that Sheila Sykes-Gatz and some other colleagues are working on 'husbandry guidelines for Pteronura brasiliensis'. The 'Otter Habitat Network Europe' (OHNE) project is showing good progress - despite unbelievable problems in getting digitised data for GIS mapping. The first habitat corridors have been identified for Germany, and will be introduced to the German otter people in early February. As a first step on the international level, it is planned to complete the 'European otter distribution map' - in a digitised form. It sounds unbelievable, but there was no 10x10km UTM grid available in a digitised form for the whole of Europe. It has therefore been necessary to develop it ourselves. On this basis, all European otter specialists will be contacted in the near future and will be asked to provide their data for this map. The advantage of this 'electronic' map will be its much higher reliability, a much higher possibility for its completion, and the chance to make it available via internet (e.g. for GIS applications). Our Asian colleagues have been very busy too. Organised by the Asian Section of the OSG, the Otter Research Group of Japan, the National Taiwan University, and the Tung-Hai University, a four-day workshop on 'conservation and public awareness of otters' will be held at Taichung, Taiwan, in December. This meeting follows the successful workshop on survey methods, which was held in Thailand in November 1997, and is the result of the great fundraising efforts of our Japanese colleagues, Motokazu Ando and Hiroshi Sasaki, in particular. The results of this workshop, and some of the other small steps the OSG is undertaking, will be introduced in the next issue of the bulletin. Till then, I wish all otter people a good start into the year 2000. Two dates for the New Year should be noted early. On October 4 - 11, 2000, the 'World Conservation Congress' of the IUCN will take place in Amman, Jordan (see http://www.iucn.org). Next, on November 4 - 7, 2000, an international workshop entitled 'How to implement the OAP?' is planned at the German otter centre (information will be available from around May 2000 onwards at http://www.otterzentrum.de). Claus Reuther RESUMEN- Desde el escritorio del
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