By Renee Francoeur
Preliminary findings from an Alberta Environment study show that the otter population in the West Country is seemingly low and sustainable.
Concerns from anglers around Rocky Mountain House over recent years about the health of the sport fisheries sparked a two-year research project into what many thought was a growing otter problem.
Fish are alleged to be one of the main items on an otter’s diet list after all.
However, since Carrie Nugent, a wildlife biologist with Alberta Environment and based in Drayton Valley, began the hunt for more data collection on the West Country otters in September 2011, she spotted only one otter.
“We saw one otter . . . It was around Nordegg and for the amount of time spent in the field, that is a really low number. I was just as surprised as anyone about that,” Nugent said.
“We looked for tracks, scats and just found not a lot of signs.
“So at this point I would say the otter population is at a really low density as it was difficult to detect them, despite targeting areas where we thought they would be most active.”
Without some sort of sample size, it’s impossible to create a population estimate, she added.
While it is known there are otters living at Cow Lake, Nugent focused on streams to find out more about the river creatures and the fisheries.
Her team researched at least 20 different streams, honing in on about 1-km sections where “prey availability” would also be escalated due to high fish density.
She also spent a large amount of time at Prairie Creek during the brown trout spawning season (October and November).
“This was an area that many anglers were specifically concerned about and if there was an otter effect, we were going to detect it over spawning or wintering,” Nugent said.
“I walked that area every week for six weeks throughout the season and didn’t find a single track, scat, no sign of an otter there.” More....