IUCN/SSC Otter Specialist Group Bulletin
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©IUCN/SCC Otter Specialist Group
Volume 33 A: Proceedings European Otter Workshop, 8 - 11 June 2015, Stockholm, Sweden Note from the Editors The European otter Workshop 2015 was held at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, from June 8-11. Approximately 50 otter scientists from 23 countries joined us for the five day long workshop. People from different Country Boards, Road Authorities, EPA, and Universities of Stockholm and Uppsala etc. also attended the workshop. |
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The theme for the workshop was Otters and human interactions and focused on Lutra lutra.
Altogether 25 talks (and 4 keynote speeches) and a number of posters were presented within three themes:
- Conflicts between otters and humans: (new pollutants, mini hydroelectric power stations, road kills, health issues etc.),
- Otter surveying in Europe in the XXI century: where we are, where we are going and is it the right direction?
- Otters and Citizen Science: joining education and research.
All abstracts are already online, and we are now editing and loading the actual papers themselves.
The EOW 2015 website is still open:
https://sites.google.com/site/europeanotterworkshop/home
Professor Emeritus Sam Erlinge from Lund University, Sweden, was invited as an honorary guest and he attended two days of the meeting (before going home for his granddaughter's graduation). His knowledge of otters is well known and many had the pleasure of talking with him during the meeting. Between meetings and in the evenings there were time to discuss joint projects, visit the museum and Skansen, an outdoor zoo and museum where we also held the conference dinner. One early morning some went for a birding tour and managed to see a beaver as well, not far from the museum.
It was such a joy to meet old – and new – otter scientists/enthusiasts from so many countries. I specially would like to point out that we now have a country representative from Russia, Alexey Yu. Oleynikov, who also attended the meeting. He represents a huge area of Lutra lutra´s habitat range and contributed interesting data from his part of the world.
The Stockholm weather showed its best (in contrast to the week before), and those of us who went for the post conference tour to the archipelago had a fantastic trip under the beautiful sun. And yes, we did find otter scats at two islands!!
With this we would like to thank all of you who participated, for making the workshop such a success. We also would like to thank the scientific committee as well for their work in reviewing contributions, and the sponsors for making this happen.
Yours
Anna Roos and Katarina Loso
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