The River Otter

Article and photos by RUSSELL A. GRAVES

Floating down Bois d’Arc Creek in Fannin County, Texas, the water is comforting. With a hue somewhere between topaz and turquoise, the liquid flowing through this creek takes its color from the hard clay subsoil that's been stubbornly eroded over time.

The creek channel proper is wide and open with no discernible flow save for a slight crease that’s created where water flows around an occasional limb that's penetrated the surface. Along the margins, button brush and ash trees compete for space.

The canoe slides quietly through the water. I'm helming the bow while my brother steers from the stern. We’ve paddled cooperatively enough where we don't need to communicate with one another to understand our ultimate intent, so we sit in silence and listen to the smattering of natural sounds emanating around us.

Soon, it's not a sound but a smell that catches my attention. It's musky and rich and beyond what I could readily recognize.

I turn and ask my brother if he smells the same and he answers in the negative.

The smell gets stronger, and I ascertain the direction from which it wafts: a low growing bush that's choked with greenbriar. Driving the canoe just feet from the bush and peering intently inside, I see movement and then I hear a warning sound.

“Pffft, pffft…” The sound comes in rapid succession and then I see a single otter bolt from the brush, slide down the bank and disappear in the water. Then another one runs and slides and then, yet another.

I turn to my brother, dumbfounded. He and I grew up in these woods and until the winter of 2011, had never seen an otter. But here they are and we have them on video, no less.

So, for 30 minutes we float in one spot on the creek and watch. In all, we see eight otters and discover a midden on an island that's littered with fish bones and mussel shells. It is their feeding site.

When we get home, we search online and check the latest biological texts. Turns out, we'd documented otters in a place they weren't supposed to be.

Long extirpated to further south and eastern portions of the state, the particular otter clan that we'd photographed somehow made its way back to its original haunts and was re-populating once again.

THE DECLINE

Considered an indicator species, the North American river otter is a species with few natural predators. First described in 1776 by German naturalist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, the North American river otter was once found in most riparian waterways and their tributaries across Texas and much of the United States. As the country settled from west to east, river otters began to decline.

Although no single cause seems to be the culprit, the consensus of the otter's decline is generally cited as habitat loss, deteriorating water quality and over-trapping. Records indicate that otters were being trapped and their pelts harvested by European settlers as early as the 1500s in North America.

As Texas and the rest of the United States became increasingly urbanized and industrialized, water quality waned. These three factors likely caused the decline in the species and by the mid20th century, river otters were relegated to habitat in extreme East Texas.

“Historically, otters were considered to be located in the eastern two-thirds of the state and up into portions of the Panhandle. Due to hunting and the fur market, by the 1960s, they were considered to be restricted only to the Neches and Trinity River basins,” wrote Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist Gary Calkins.

In the latter half of the 20th century, water quality began to improve. According to the United States Geological Survey, “Upgrades to wastewater treatment systems are likely responsible for the significant decrease in concentrations of the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus in urban streams. Reductions in these nutrients are promising because nutrients contribute to algal blooms and impair drinkingwater quality. In contrast, changes in nitrogen concentrations in agricultural areas were small and inconsistent, and in agricultural areas, more sites had increases in phosphorus concentration than decreases. These results suggest that efforts to reduce nutrients in agricultural areas have not been as successful as in urban areas. The nitrogen species ammonium, however, decreased broadly across all land uses. Ammonium can be highly toxic to aquatic organisms and is associated with wastewater, manure and atmospheric deposition. The broad reduction in ammonium concentrations indicates that efforts to reduce these sources of ammonium have largely been successful.”

From an anecdotal standpoint, at least, as the water quality in streams improved, fish species thrived, and the otter, who is sensitive to fish-born environmental toxins, began to expand its range into suitable habitats.

OTTERS AT A GLANCE

In general, there are two types of otters in North America and they belong to the same family of animals that includes weasels and badgers. Besides the river otter, the sea otter is a larger cousin who lives in the northern Pacific Ocean.

In appearance, the sea otter is similar to the river otter but the resemblance stops there. The sea otter is three times larger than its inland cousin. In size, the river otter grows from three to four feet in length and weighs from 10 to 30pounds as an adult with the male being slightly larger than the females.

On average a female gives birth to two or three fully furred pups that weigh about six ounces when born. They grow fast on their mother's milk and after being weaned in three months, they remain with their mother for the next year. In all, a river otter can live up to 15 years in the wild.

Recently while doing a biological survey of my property in Fannin County, I uncovered a midden of mussels and crayfish piled at the edge of a man-made berm that impounds a two-acre wetland. Investigating further, I found a couple of other pieces of otter evidence like their foul-smelling scat and tracks.

While the otter is at home in the water and can swim incredibly well and hold its breath for five minutes or more underwater, they can also negotiate well over land. As such, they often connect various habitats and use numerous bodies of water as they forage for food like fish, crawdads and amphibians.

Where land meets water, you'll see mud “slides” where the otter glides from land into the water. Around my wetland, I find numerous slides where they've been traveling from a creek to the marsh to feed on crawfish.

The river otter has a large tail and webbed feet, each of which gives them the ability to be agile swimmers and effective aquatic predators. While underwater, the otter can close their ears and nostrils to keep water out and can locate food by feel with their whiskers.

While Texas winters are relatively mild, the river otter has some of the densest furs per square inch that are found in animals and as such, was prized by furriers and trappers when the country was settled and into much of the 20th century. Now that the practice of commercial trapping has waned, and the overall water quality in Texas has largely improved, the river otter is primed for a comeback.

THE COMEBACK

“Really, when we started this thing [the research], I sort of assumed that otters were pretty well just East Texas-centric, maybe in the Neches…Sabine River…Red River. That type of thing. But, man, the population that's in the Colorado River is way more than I had expected and a lot farther up the Colorado River than I ever expected, and then a lot farther up the Red [River] than I ever expected. [There are] just a lot more in general than I really thought there were out there just based on the number of people reporting stuff,” said Gary Calkins in a 2017 interview with the Passport to Texas radio segment.

Calkins has been making a map in regard to otter sightings in Texas, and the map's been steadily growing for the past 10 years or so. My brother’s and my initial report was the first to be made from Fannin County back in 2011; and, since then, scores of reports have been made from around here and other locations.

“Every sighting I get, I ask them [the public] to describe how the animal swam. I ask them if it made any vocalizations. Ask some questions about behavior—and better yet—can I get pictures or something. The only time I will count an animal to put it on this map, is if I am beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is an otter—based on vocalizations and the way it swam. I feel pretty comfortable that the map is representing otters and not mistaken identity. "If it's something that I can't wrap my head around, that 'yeah, it's an otter,' then I won't put it on the map. I'll tell the people to keep looking and thank you. One of the things that I've done is that out of all the emails that I've received, I've made myself respond to every single one of them. So that people aren't sending something to a black hole; and I think that's why it's kept momentum on sightings,” reported Calkins to show host Cecilia Nasti.

Even crowd-sourced maps like iNaturalist show the expansion of the river otter from Victoria and nearby coastal regions all the way up to Iowa Park and as far west as Abilene. The question is, “Have otters always been there or is it just easier to document and report their existence with the proliferation of smartphones and their built-in cameras?” The answers are a bit unclear at the moment.

Either way, otter sightings are definitely on the increase and biologists like Calkins believe that conditions are ripe in Texas for their comeback. Anecdotal and scientific information both seem to confirm the data: The otters are back.