Elakha Alliance on LinkedIn: Sea otter reintroduction in Oregon: What are the next steps? (2024)

FAQs

What are the cons of reintroducing sea otters? ›

Sea otters can greatly affect the environment they live in. As sea otters have been reintroduced or naturally recovered in other coastal areas of North America, they have substantially disturbed the structure and dynamics of nearshore food webs.

Southern Sea Otter Recovery Efforts

The recovery plan recommended the establishment of a second colony of otters at San Nicolas Island, California, in order to minimize the possibility that a single natural or human-caused catastrophe would adversely affect a significant portion of the population.

Still endangered

Sea otters are on the red (endangered) list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).

Conservancy priority for the funding is for projects that advance the evaluation of sea otter reintroduction as a potential recovery strategy for southern sea otters in California.

Oil Spills

The greatest threat to the sea otter population is an oil spill. Because their numbers are low and they are located in a rather small geographic area, the California otter population could be devastated by oil contamination.

What other big animals might an otter eat? Whatever they can catch and overpower. They are smart, agile, and strong predators. They do eat a lot of amphibians and fish, but they'll also take out sizeable beavers, raccoons, plus snapping turtles, snakes, and small gators.

Sea otters have been protected by the International Fur Seal Treaty since 1911. This treaty between U.S., Russia, Japan, and Great Britain was established to ban large-scale commercial hunting of sea otters and fur seals and to allow their populations to recover. Since then, sea otter numbers have increased.

Recovery Actions

Be Otter Savvy Program educated the wildlife-viewing public (such as kayakers and photographers) on responsible viewing of wild sea otters to reduce the stress and harassment and is collecting data on disturbance impacts.

As top predators, sea otters are critical to maintaining the balance of nearshore ecosystems, such as kelp forests, embayments and estuaries. Without sea otters, sea urchins can overpopulate the sea floor and devour the kelp forests that provide cover and food for many other marine animals.

Are sea otters making a comeback? ›

The California sea otter, once hunted to the edge of extinction, has staged a thrilling comeback in the last century. Now, a team of scientists has discovered that the otters' success story has led to something just as remarkable: the restoration of their declining coastal marsh habitat.

Otters are an essential keystone species.

Along the Pacific coast, sea otters help control the sea urchin population. Fewer sea urchins in turn help prevent kelp forests from being overgrazed.

Sea otters, those adorable deep diving, back floating, shellfish eating mammals were once found up and down the Pacific coast. And then came the maritime fur trade. By the beginning of the 1900s, 99% of sea otters had been killed. Now the US Fish and Wildlife Service is considering reintroducing sea otters in Oregon.

Through education, rehabilitation, reducing trade and research, IOSF is working to protect and conserve the 13 species of otter that live across the world.

Southern sea otters are listed as a threatened species under the Federal Endangered Species Act and are also protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which prohibits harassing, hunting, capturing, or killing marine mammals.

They are the main predators of kelp-eating species such as sea urchins and abalone. Without sea otters, kelp forests are greatly reduced, resulting in the loss of habitat for many fish species. The coastline would also lose its buffer against storms.

As what's known as a keystone species, sea otters play a central role in maintaining the ecological health of the places where they live. They consume sea urchins and other invertebrates that — if left unchecked — would degrade the habitats that sustain an abundance of fishes, seabirds, and myriad other animals.

As southern sea otter population and range expanded in the first half of the 20th century, otters came into contact with lucrative abalone populations in Southern California, with com- mercial fishers attributing the decline in abalone populations to the reemergent otters (Carswell et al., 2015).

Reintroducing sea otters to northern California and Oregon would restore a missing link to the coastal ecology of this region. Hunting for the fur trade throughout the 18th and 19th centuries extirpated sea otters from most of their habitat along the Pacific Rim.