By Annette HInkle
Sure, Sag Harbor has Otter Pond. But were there ever any actual otters in it?Â
“Yes,” says wildlife biologist Mike Bottini — but it’s probably been quite a long time.
River otters (Lontra canadensis), have long been valued by trappers for their thick pelts. Depopulation of Long Island’s otters and many other species began in the 1600s with the arrival of Europeans. Habitat loss and hunting continued to take a toll on these animals on into the 1700s and well beyond as farming and other intensive types of land use took over.
By the time Bottini arrived on the East End in 1988, the DEC’s Long Island region hunting and trapping regulations still had otter listed, but it’s likely few people had actually seen an otter, much less trapped one, in decades.
“We lobbied the DEC to get the otter season abolished,” said Bottini. “There were very small numbers of these animals. In the back of my mind, I filed it away. Sometimes people called and said, ‘I saw an otter,’ but I was skeptical.”
In recent years though, Bottini has found good reason to believe there are, once again, otters on Long Island. Not a huge number of them, mind you, but enough to spark his interest. First came reports of the occasional otter sighting, accidental trapping or roadkill, mostly well to the west of the East End, though there were scattered instances reported on both the South and North Fork as well as Shelter Island — including one that ended up in a muskrat trap near Mecox Bay.
More compelling evidence came in April 2006, when a river otter was captured on a video camera that was set up to record alewife migration at Big Fresh Pond in North Sea.Â
Then Bottini came upon some compelling river otter evidence himself in the Northwest Woods section of East Hampton. Interestingly enough, it was the arrival of another mysterious animal that led him to that evidence — the beaver (or beavers) which showed up in the Grace Estate a couple of years back and have called the pond home ever since.
“At Scoy Pond I was intrigued by the arrival of the beaver,” recalls Bottini. “That first winter it was here, I went on the ice and mapped the trees it had chewed. I found the lodge and looked at one of the paths near it — and saw the otter scat.”
Otters, says Bottini, have a tendency to frequent the same spots over and over — latrine sites are one of the most reliable methods of discovering if an otter has been in the area. Bottini explains that when they leave the water, otters look for an open patch of land close by where they can roll on the ground to leave their scent marks. This is also where they tend to deposit their scat. That winter day, Bottini was shocked to see otter scat — which, unlike beaver scat, contains mostly undigested fish parts — on the path.Â
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Bottini who did a thorough exploration of the area around the pond and found a total of five river otter latrine sites.
Though a survey of Long Island’s river otter population had been done by Paul Connor in the 1960s, Bottini felt there was now enough evidence to warrant another examination of the otter situation on the island.
“Enough interesting things were coming up, so I sought funding for an update,” says Bottini.
After receiving a grant to conduct an investigation, Bottini and other naturalists spent three months last winter conducting field surveys in search of otter evidence. The results of that survey are detailed in Bottini’s recently released study, “The Status and Distribution of the River Otter on Long Island, New York.”
While it may seem like a startling coincidence that Bottini found otter scat in such close proximity to beaver habitat, he notes there is evidence that the two share a symbiotic relationship. They don’t compete for the same food source (beavers are vegetarian) and otters have been known to take over abandoned beaver lodges when the first tenant moves out.
“Otters don’t mess with beavers, but they will rest in beaver lodges when they’re out,” he says. “And the beaver tolerates the otter.”
Otters are, of course, excellent swimmers and Bottini suspects that any otters on Long Island (or their parents) originally came over from Connecticut or Westchester County in New York. Although in general, otters avoid long open water crossings, in his study, Bottini notes that it’s not known whether dispersing young looking for new habitat stick to that general rule.
“Otters are excellent swimmers,” notes Bottini, “and are certainly capable of crossing Long Island Sound at its widest point.”
In preparation for his study, Bottini sent mass emails to naturalists and press releases to nature groups to figure out where to focus his research. Despite the fact that there is still a good deal of prime otter habitat on the East End, Bottini was surprised to find more otter evidence surfacing to the west.
“I was mapping to figure how I would prioritize my research,” he says. “I thought It would be mostly on the East End. But suddenly, the north shore near the Nassau and Suffolk border kept coming up.”
Now that his study’s complete, Bottini estimates there are at least eight river otters living on Long Island — four of them on the north shore of Nassau County, one in the Nissequogue River watershed, one in the west end of the Peconic Estuary, one on the south shore and one — just one — in the Southold/Shelter Island/East Hampton area.
Though scat is good evidence for indicating the presence of a river otter, it does not provide reliable estimates of the numbers of otter. It is likely the scat Bottini saw around Scoy Pond was left there by a single otter, an animal which he believes is also visiting sites on Shelter Island and in Southold Town.
Whether a single otter on this part of Long Island can ever find a mate is anyone’s guess. It may also be that this otter was once one of a pair. Included in Bottini’s study is documentation of a female otter that was struck and killed by a vehicle in Greenport in March, 2007. The results of a necropsy on the animal indicate it had two fresh placental scars. That means the otter had recently given birth to two pups in the area. Most likely, Bottini notes, they were less than one month old at the time and would have also perished.
So no, there still are no otters in Otter Pond. But if you’re a fan, a recolonization program for the river otter on Long Island is not such a far-fetched idea. In 1995, the state instituted a reintroduction project for the otter in Upstate New York that has been quite successful.
In the meantime, there is still much to learn about otter behavior, and Bottini would like to start a website where people can go to document their own description of otter sightings on Long Island — and one day in the not to distant future, maybe Otter Pond will have a name that truly fits the bill.
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Top: Photo of a river otter taken at St. John Pond, Oyster Bay, December 2008 by Robert Sendlein.
Above:Â Mike Bottini revisits a latrine site near Scoy Pond where he found river otter scat last winter. Behind him is a tree that has been gnawed by the pond’s resident beaver.
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