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Large aquatic mammals

Dave Burr

Dave Burr

Senior Member
I know that its been discussed once or twice before but here is solid evidence that the otter is prolific across the Midlands and is likely to remain that way until we dig out the DDT :rolleyes:

Discuss

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The faint splash of an otter gently entering a river could have been a sound lost to the Midlands forever, but the iconic mammal has fought its way back from the brink of extinction, a new report from the Environment Agency can reveal.

Otters, which almost disappeared from England in the 1970s due to the toxic effects of pesticides, are now found across the Midlands . There is even evidence of this shy creature visiting Stafford town centre.

Along the River Wye, one of the best fishing rivers in England , otter populations have reached their maximum capacity. Signs of otters were found at over 80% of the sites checked, compared with under 20% in the 1970s. There are numerous otter signs to be found in the centre of Hereford.

In the Severn catchment almost 60% of sites proved positive compared with less than 5% in the 1970s. Populations are particularly healthy in the Upper Severn and there has been a considerable increase in the Avon catchment.

Another stronghold exists along the whole of the River Teme from Cwm Gwyn to Powick, but especially between Ludlow and Knighton.

The otter population has recovered thanks to a ban on harmful pesticides put in place in the 1970s and legal protection given to otters, making it an offence to intentionally kill or harm them.

They have also been helped by a significant improvement in water quality over the past 20 years, bringing fish back to rivers that were once grossly polluted.

The Environment Agency is supporting projects by Wildlife Trusts and others across the Midlands to encourage otters to colonise individual areas.

At Attingham Estate, near Shrewsbury, we have been working with the National Trust to open up 130 metres of a formerly culverted watercourse to form a more natural channel and pool which will benefit both fish and otters.

Otters travel long distances and road and rail crossings where bridges and culverts do not allow safe passage are hazardous. Several otters have been reported killed on the roads in recent years. When planning our flood defences we seek to build ‘otter underpasses’, like the one at Cannock , to enable otters to cross safely over the road.(See also the video link below for an example on the River Sence in Leicestershire.)

Technical Specialist Andrew Crawford, who wrote the report and is based in our Lichfield office says “ Otters are recovering, which is great news. The otter’s recovery has already exceeded the 2015 targets set in the revised Biodiversity Action Plan and we believe that the species will now fully recover within 20 years.

“In 2009, surveyors visited rivers and canals, looking for signs of otters. They were unlikely to see these shy nocturnal animals themselves, but were looking for evidence such as footprints and droppings.

“A top aquatic predator, otters are excellent indicators of good habitat and river quality. Their return to Midlands rivers shows how much we have achieved in improving water quality.

“Rivers in England are the healthiest for over 20 years but there is more to do. We are working with farmers, businesses and water companies to continue to reduce pollution and improve water quality.â€

The survey was a repeat of an earlier otter survey in 2000-2002. At that time, otters were found across most of the Midlands, but were rather sparsely distributed on the Warwickshire Avon and in the lower parts of the Trent catchment.

This latest survey shows that while signs of otters on the Warwickshire Avon have increased substantially, the Trent catchment has only shown a small level of increase since 2000-02. There has however been considerable consolidation and re-colonisation. During the latest survey almost 40% of sites tested positive compared with about 5% in the 1970s.

A full copy of the report is available on the Environment Agency website at www.environment-agency.gov.uk/otters


MORE INFORMATION Contact Lyn Fraley on 0121 711 5829/5855

(these numbers can also be used during an emergency to contact a duty press officer)
 
Dave Burr said:
I know that its been discussed once or twice before but here is solid evidence that the otter is prolific across the Midlands and is likely to remain that way until we dig out the DDT :rolleyes:

Discuss]
Click to expand...


Little to say that except that with DDT comments and implied attitudes like that, Angling in Britain might not have a very long-term future - coarse fishing, at least.

PS - Take a look at the recent pay-for-play taking-out of Emperor, the huge Exmoor stag, during the annual rut. Deeply disasteful not merely to the public but also to those who shoot or having nothing against shooting deer.
 
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Why was the shooting of that particular deer 'deeply distasteful'?
 
Spoke to a very zealous and passionate guy this morning recruiting members for the Wildlife Trust.

He claimed that they were interested in protecting habitat and all wildlife including fish, I asked him how as an angler I could square being a member when they were promoting the re-introduction of the otter.

His point was simple - if we do not protect the habitat we will not have any wildlife - the biggest threat to all species was man, primarily through continued urbanisation. He dismissed the explosion in the otter population, though he went on to say that we lost 400 otters last year in the UK through road kill.

Still pondering on whether to join - though I have a view we are better supporting rather than fighting such organisations - be that as individuals or through the Angling Trust or dare I say it the angling clubs many of us belong to - United we stand and all that.
 
Paul Boote said:
Deeply disasteful not merely to the public but also to some of those who shoot or having nothing against shooting deer.
Click to expand...

Small edit for you there. I know plenty of those that shoot that don't find it distasteful, some certainly do though. I shoot and did find it strange that it should be shot during the rut. However, after seeing the "recent footage" of the stag concerned on the news, I really thought that it looked lame. With that in mind, I wasn't remotely surprised that it was shot.

P.S. I was really hoping that this was a thread about hippos. Should have guessed really!;):D
 
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Nigel Gray said:
Why was the shooting of that particular deer 'deeply distasteful'?
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Two reasons:

1) Someone taking a pop at you when "your mind is on the ladies". Fancy it yourself? No. Well outta order.

2) Easy target and ego-boosting (willy-boosting, too?) trophy available to the discreetest, highest bidder.

Pongs.
 
Nigel Gray said:
Why was the shooting of that particular deer 'deeply distasteful'?
Click to expand...

A stag during the annual rut is hardly much of a challenge having things on his mind other than his own security. It would be similar to fishing for trout in a stock pond.
 
Paul Boote said:
Two reasons:

1) Someone taking a pop at you when "your mind is on the ladies". Fancy it yourself? No. Well outta order.

2) Easy target and ego-boosting (willy-boosting, too?) trophy available to the discreetest, highest bidder.

Pongs.
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buying the rights to shoot a animal and shooting it for ego reasons is unacceptable, but hay,ho, the way of the world, but don't worry, someone will write a article in the guardian calling for a all out ban, which won't happen,
thank god.
 
Don't get upset Paul, the DDT comment was very much tongue in cheek.

It does show that the otter is or very nearly fully restored to the food chain. One does then wonder why it needs to be protected if it is doing so well? Buzzards are getting a bad press of late. Their numbers are well up and they are now being classed as a pest by farmers etc. There are now calls to remove them from the protected list.

I am not stating an opinion here, just asking the question.

As for the stag. The Exmoor deer numbers increase by 30% or more each year and they are heavily managed through legal (and illegal) shooting. I am certain that another stag will come through to replace the alpha stag very soon.
 
Shooting deer in the rut is hardly unusual, you certainly wouldn't want to shoot them after the rut if you wish to use the carcass for food as a stags condition falls away rapidly.

Is there any proof that this stag was shot by a discreet, high bidder or is this purely supposition?
 
I know some people who have been living in the area for 30 years: local landowners / farmers have closed ranks and are keeping schtum. Not poaching, then.
 
You have to question what goes through the mind of someone, who sees such a magnificant beast and thinks 'I want to kill that'
But then again, you have to question what goes through the mind of a lad that wishes to 'brick' a young girl to death. Or even, heaven forbid, someone who wishes to drag a fish out its environment, by a hook through its mouth!
We're a curious, sometimes disturbing species.
 
Mate of mine shot an 8 pointer the other week off a scottish mountain, the stalker that took him has to take 40 stags a season for the estate,and thats before they start on the does, its how they manage the numbers as there is a shortage of Wolves to do the job for them ! Costs you £120 a point for the head so can get costly, like it or not thats the way it is.
 
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Yes. A pal of mine was for years chief stalker and capitas (head man, manager) of huge acreages (several hundreds of thousands per estancia - ranch or estate) in Argentine Patagonia, taking foreign shots - some Americans, but the great majority Germans -after the biggest Red deer stags in the world, deer introduced from Germany in the 19th Century that in the wildest of wild country and vastness multiplied in number and grew to unprecedented size. He only stopped doing so in the early 1990s (when he retired and became a part-time trout-fishing guide) when the "do it, or else..." pressure put upon him and on other stalkers by their employers the landowners to deliver huge heads irrespective of the damage they'd been told it would do to the herds and the likelihood of them producing future huge stags, quickly killed the goose that had laid the golden egg - and, with no more huge stags to bag, the "sports" moved on, looking for bigger pickings elsewhere.


PS - Somewhere in the Boote Archive I have a few slides of me thigh-deep in a Patagonian trout river taken by a girlfriend who had one of my cameras and two of hers slung round her neck. A HUGE stag had appeared and waded into the river ten yards below me and ten above her.

Amongst mutually chorused, hushed "F-ing hell!"s, she somehow managed to squeeze off a few shots.
 
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Paul Boote said:
I know some people who have been living in the area for 30 years: local landowners / farmers have closed ranks and are keeping schtum. Not poaching, then.
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I've no reason whatsoever to doubt what you have been told. It is however at odds with what I have been told by the local BDS rep.
 
Inland North Devon is a highly singular place, Nigel; it does things and thinks very differently from the rest of Britain. Remember last year when some "no hunting on my patch" landowner had two of his own deer dumped dead on his doorstep, just to make a "don't eff with us" Godfather-like point? Bit like the dear old Chairman's highly erratic Hamsters...
 
Here, I managed to get past the Murdoch paywall:


From The Sunday Times

October 18, 2009

Townies in the country


Richard Caring has upset the locals with his flashy hunting estate in Somerset
Simon Mills

It was something of a shock for Richard Caring, the multimillionaire businessman, owner of Annabel’s nightclub and the Ivy restaurant in London, when, last month, he discovered one of his prize Exmoor stags dumped on the doorstep of his country estate near Dulverton, on the Devon-Somerset border. It had been slain by two bullets from a .22 calibre rifle. A few weeks later, a second stag was shot in similar circumstances. Bewildered, Caring has now hired former SAS soldiers to track the marksman, and has even offered a £15,000 reward for his capture.

We’ll probably never know exactly why these killings occurred, but was Caring — by being something of a vulgar townie, flinging his money and celebrity friends about and landing his chopper in the middle of a field on a Friday afternoon — kind of, well, asking for it? Did the rather pimped-out way he went about his brand-new, all-the-gear, country lifestyle manage to wind up the locals, until one of them eventually snapped?

For instance, when Caring acquired the plum bit of land that makes up the Lakes, widely acknowledged as one of the finest high pheasant shoots in Britain, was he being flashy when he saw off all comers for the 500 acres and the adjoining Pixton Stables by offering a bid-busting £4.1m? Then, seemingly keen to accommodate his London pals, did he appear overly hasty when he ploughed in with designs for a super-luxe hunting lodge, complete with interior by the celebrity designer Tara Bernerd and a helipad? Locals weren’t impressed by such impatient overstatement. Apparently, their nickname for the lodge is “the Bagel Shackâ€.

Pheasant shooting, Caring-style, doesn’t appear to be the subtly nuanced traditional pursuit of wet, threadbare tweed and smelly labradors, either. Not content with having actual, real-life game to stalk, he had a series of naff bronze deer statues installed round the land and he built a gazebo designed for sipping Dom Pérignon mid-shoot. Guest guns are invited to wear Lakes-branded tweeds from a well-stocked estate wardrobe. Black Land Rovers carry Lakes registration plates, while logoed plastic carrier bags are provided to take the plucked and oven-ready dead birds home. Billed as “exclusively for the exclusiveâ€, one member of the shooting community says it is known as “the Vegas of the shooting worldâ€. Missing the point of the country gent, out with his dogs, bagging the odd bird, Caring stocked the shoot with more than 70,000 pheasants. “It’s just celebrities out with automatics, who’ve hardly shot before,†he continues, “but there are so many birds in the air, they can’t miss.â€

One section of Caring’s bucolic fantasy takes place over water on custom-built pontoons. Here, outdoor speakers belt out loud classical music, while guns bang away at birds overhead in the style of Apocalypse Now. One guest was horrified to see a captain of industry boldly lighting up a cigar mid-slaughter with a £20 note. “It was an insensitive thing to do; especially when you consider that the going rate for a beater is about £20 a day.â€

As the outspoken columnist Liz Jones recently found out, country people don’t take kindly to Londoners coming in, operating townie-style. Someone took a pot shot at the letterbox of Jones’s home, also near Dulverton, after she bad-mouthed locals in one of her tabloid missives.

In Bridport, a handsome but modest west Dorset market town, there is a similarly militant group who have taken exception to their home being nicknamed “Notting Hill on Sea†by aspirational weekenders. This unwelcome sobriquet — meant as a loaded compliment, taken as a downright insult — gets passed around fashionable towns with as much enthusiasm as a beach sewage caution. It has already been bestowed upon St Ives in Cornwall and Walberswick in Suffolk, and now, despite being actually two miles inland, it is Bridport’s turn. It boasts the Electric Palace Cinema, with a stellar list of patrons that includes Mike Leigh, Ralph Steadman and the local rocker PJ Harvey, a smart new Waitrose (converted from a Somerfield earlier this year) and its own branch of Costa Coffee. On South Street, a boutique does a brisk trade in Cath Kidstonesque clobber to visitors who come for the “gastro revolutionâ€.

For, with a lot of help from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, of Channel 4 fame, Bridport and the surrounding country has become a foodie destination. A boutique hotel, the Bull, has arrived to accommodate the hordes that descend on the nearby Hive Beach Café. Overlooking the Hive is an empty retirement home, now owned by Mary-Lou Sturridge, a former managing director of the Groucho Club, who plans to convert it into a hotel and restaurant. A short drive away, in Axminster, Fearnley-Whittingstall has opened a deli and restaurant, while, in Lyme Regis, the one-time Ivy chef Mark Hix has opened Hix Oyster & Fish House — Tracey Emin has already visited and Keith Floyd famously enjoyed his last meal there.

While urban types see this as a positive, country people have another view. They are as distrustful of publicity as they are of townies. Publicity, they’ll tell you, attracts the wrong sort — sloanes, celebrities, showy millionaires — all lording it around the Sunday market, complaining about the dearth of organic produce and pushing up the house prices.

On the entertainingly vituperative comments boards of the local website bridportradio.co.uk, you will find Fearnley-Whittingstall dubbed “Huge Furry S***ting Stool†by locals, while the aforementioned Bull is berated for being “a ponce-infested, Notting-Hilly, poo pile that Bridport doesn’t needâ€. Similarly unappreciated is “anything that describes itself as ‘gusto’, or ‘gastro’, because it will normally mean incomers pandering to weekenders with overpriced gut-chuckâ€. One particularly angry (possibly dangerous) contributor suggests that “one man with a high volocity [sic] rifle and telescopic sight could bring house prices down like a rat out of an aquaduct [sic]. No one would want to live in Bridders after a series of indiscriminate snipingsâ€. Indeed.

Despite Hix growing up in the Bridport area, he still faces the ire of the locals. “You always get some people who are automatically going to slag off everything in the country. But I will defend anyone trying to make a go of a new business here.â€

Like many parts of the southwest, in west Dorset there is a jarring disparity between the lowly average wage and the sky-high prices of property. In Notting Hill, estate agents used to call this juxtaposition of rich and poor “edgyâ€. In the country, they have several less polite words.

So, to reduce the risk of hosting one of Richard Caring’s stag parties at your country home, may I suggest you ditch the boxfresh Hunters, peel off the Kensington and Chelsea parking permit from your windscreen, keep your voice down... and watch out for snipers.
 
The same thing happened to the white deer that used to roam on Exmoor. Her head was placed outside the house of one of those that sought to protect her.

Poaching is a big issue on the moor and there are plenty of guns secreted away in little nooks and crannies for when the opportunity arises. I used to do the occasional anti-poacher patrol but catching someone who is good at hunting is never easy.
 
Dave, I am probably being a bit slow here, but why would farmers think of Buzzards as pests. They eat rabbits and wood pidgions. I have an urban Buzzard who regularly visits my garden. Scares the crop raiders off, always welcome.
Shaun
 
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