Texas Born Texas Strong

Presence of river otters signals a Texas ecological recovery.

River otters are popping up in Texas waterways where they haven’t been seen in decades, giving wildlife officials hope that the rarely seen critter is on the comeback.

Sightings of the elusive Texas river otter have increased, some in unexpected places, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Biologist Gary Calkins.

The animals were believed to have been restricted to the Piney Woods of east Texas because of habitat loss and trapping.  But people have been spotting them outside Austin and as far away as Wichita Falls, northwest of Fort Worth near the Oklahoma line.

“This tells us that this species has made a huge recovery in the state,” said Calkins.

“Otters live in the water, and are not something people normally look for,” said Calkins. “They are really kind of a shy, retiring animal and do most of their hunting right at dawn or right at dusk so they are not something you are normally going to stumble across.”

Historical range maps have shown in the past otters occurring from East to Central Texas, but too much trapping in the past limited them to the eastern quarter of the state.   Department reports now show that the animals are returning to their historic range.

“If you have crawfish and a lot of prey items in the waterway, otters are going to be more noticed in the system and show that it’s generally doing well ecologically,” said Calkins.  ”It shows there is enough food to sustain them, and the prey items are really sensitive so that’s kind of a key.”

River otters are one of the Houston Zoo’s most popular attractions because of their playful nature, yet the zoo may be one of the few places wildlife watchers are likely to see them.

The river otter, a member of the weasel family, is a slim carnivore with webbed feet and typically is 2 to 2 1/2 feet long.  With slender, dark-brown bodies, river otters can zip through the water at speeds reaching or even exceeding 7 mph.

It has thick brown fur, which was in high demand to be turned into fur coats as recently as the 1970s.  The cute and playful animals are known to build slides on riverbanks and ride down them on their bellies.

When diving, they can remain under water for several minutes at a time.   And they make hardly a ripple when swimming or diving, making them among the most stealthy of aquatic mammals.

“As far as human activity, they want to stay away,” Calkins said. “They’re highly intelligent, so they can pretty much sense threatening situations. They’re not just going to blunder into something that gets them into trouble.”

Otters are as playful as children, wrestling with each other, flopping around in somersaults and sliding on their bellies down stream banks.

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