Research and analysis

Post mortem studies of otters found dead in England and Wales: health and ecotoxicology

UK otter populations are healthy and continue to expand across England and Operations. This is the main finding of a series of studies carried out by the Environment Agency over the last fifteen years.

• From: Environment Agency
• Published: 1 March 2007

Documents

Post mortem studies of otters (Lutra lutra) found dead in England and Wales: health and ecotoxicology

Ref: LIT 2851

PDF, 368 KB, 2 pages

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Details

UK otter populations are healthy and continue to expand across England and Wales. This is the main finding of a series of studies carried out by the Environment Agency over the last fifteen years. Post-mortems carried out on over 950 otters between 1992 and 2003 looked at the overall health of otters, factors affecting their survival, the levels of man-made chemicals in wild otters and the impacts these have on otter populations. The results suggest that one of the factors behind this recovery may be decreasing levels of organochlorine pesticides in the environment.

Published 1 March 2007