It's a real otter - in Sussex!

By Fran Southgate

Sussex Wetlands & Living Landscapes Adviser

I can hardly believe it, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure that the day would ever come when I could report that a video has been taken of a genuine, real live otter in Sussex. We’ve had dead otters and footprints, and otter spraint, and tales of chance encounters, but we’ve never had a picture before where we could say ‘yes this is definitely an otter’.

But this is definitely an otter J …. And it’s definitely in Sussex.

As an ex-Otter Officer of ten years, and Wetland Officer for five, this is one of the most exciting bits of news I’ve heard in a very long time. As one of my colleagues said, I feel like I should do a celebratory conga around the Sussex Wildlife Trust!

But what it really means is that all those who’ve worked tirelessly for decades to help improve the health of our rivers, are finally seeing some results. The presence of otters indicates that the whole of the ecosystem is healthy – from the plants and bugs, through various shapes and sizes of slug, dragonfly, crustacean, mollusc and fish, all the way up through the food chain to the otter.

I have everything crossed that the otter decides to stay, and that it doesn’t get run over, or persecuted by misinformed people who think that they terrorise fish. With any luck, in a few years we might see two otters together, so that we can report our first breeding pair in Sussex for over 50 years to you soon.