There were a few legal releases, by wildlife groups in the eighties and nineties. I would have thought that these on the whole failed to survive.
Certainly one of the first releases was in fact by the otter hunters themselves in order to demonstrate this point. At the time, in the seventies, and I see even now according to the BBC the otter hunt was blamed for the decline. These reintroductions failed to achieve anything as the environment couldn't support the otters.
As with any animal that is in decline, you can't solve the problem just by introducing more of them. The solutions were improvements to habitat and removal of pesticides, not re introductions by well meaning publicity seeking groups.
As for the supposed animal rights idiots their fantasy of releasing otters were just that, complete fantasy on their part and anyone who believed them.
Presently a few wildlife groups have re released otters found injured on the roads etc. This makes nice TV on Springwatch or whatever, but again usually results in those animals being killed pretty quickly by the otters who are in residence, unless they kill the resident otters and take there place.
Personally I am happy that Otters have spread back to their rightful place as part of the UK countryside and would not want to see their habitat destroyed or the reintroduction of pesticides which caused their decline.
This is a little like the mass release year after year into the Severn and the Wye of salmon parr. This has had little or no impact on the number of Salmon returning to spawn as the problems for Salmon survival do not lay in the number of fry being produced, but the numbers able to actually return.
In my view re stocking, be it with fish or mammals is only of value once the environment is correct for the survival of the species in decline. With otters they fortunately were not entirely wiped out despite mans best efforts. Once the environment was corrected they recovered. It has been done with otters and it can be done with Salmon, Roach and the other fish species presently threatened by environmental decline.
I would point out that some of the reports in the press I have seen on this have only featured anglers in a negative light as being against otters. Anglers should, in my opinion at least, be publicly welcoming the return of the otter but at the same time pointing out strongly that this is in no way an indication that our rivers are somehow now all healthy. The governments own figures, produced by the EA as part of the water directive show that nearly all our rivers fall well short of even basic environmental standards. I would agree with Paul here that the obsession of a small group of celebrity anglers with otters is causing harm to the image of anglers as guardians of the river environment.
