discoverwildlife.com BBC WILDLIFE 75how they all combine or what the long-
term impact of this cocktail will be. Other
substances found in otters’ livers include
caffeine, artificial sweeteners, synthetic
hormones from contraceptive pills, anti-
inflammatories and anti-psychotic drugs.
Now environmental organisations and
campaigners are calling for urgent action
to address the cumulative impacts of a long
list of pressures on the UK’s freshwater
environments. Raw sewage and wastewater is
discharged into rivers. Run off from intensive
agriculture causes algal blooms that suffocate
aquatic plants and animals. Chemical
pollution from active and abandoned mines
washes heavy metals into our watercourses.
The list goes on. Otters are known as a
‘sentinel’ species because their presence and
well-being is an indicator of the health of the
wider environment. This also goes the other
way, of course – if our rivers and waterways
are in trouble, so are our otters, again.L
ooking for otters has led me
to do a lot of river watching.
One day, while accompanying
Scottish photographer Laurie
Campbell on the banks of the
Tweed, the river was racing along and we
were searching the rolling brown water for a
rolling brown otter. It struck me that otters
are so hard to spot because they’re so like
the river itself. Mesmerised by the water
hurtling past, I was throwing words around
trying to find a fitting description and every
word I tried fitted otters, too: powerful,
playful, muscular, winding, turning, flowing,
surging... as if otters were river incarnate.OTTERS O
I find otters inspiring to think about.
First, their aquatic movement enchants me –
only cetaceans can compete with the kinetic
poetry of an otter looping, swirling, twisting
and sliding through the water’s surface. This
beauty engages me in immediacy: a more
alive experience of the moment that brings
insights and clarity. Also, the arc of their
story took place within my lifetime. It shows
how much can change over the course of
one generation – what can go so right and
so wrong. Above all, otters are a vibrant
reminder of the chain of actions, reactions
and unintended consequences that ripple
through the living world.
In the 1950s, we didn’t stop to consider
that substances intended to improve crop
yields would poison our waters and the
otters that hunt and feed in them. Just as we
don’t think today that the stuff of our daily
life – caffeine, medicine, contraception – will
end up in the tissues of an otter’s body.
Otters encompass connections: between
land and water; river and sea; past, present
and future. We need our habitat to be fit for
otters to ensure it’s fit for us all.If our rivers and waterways are in
trouble, so are our otters, again