Texas River Otters Revisited
Friday, November 6th, 2009
Texas River Otter
This is Passport to Texas
A few months ago we aired a program about Texas river otters with biologist Gary Calkins. At the time, he told us few people ever get to see otters…but then…
With the awareness now from the program, people are talking about it. And so, we’re getting to hear what they’re seeing.
What you’re seeing and telling us about, are river otters… a lot of them it seems…and some in unexpected places.
This has been awesome. We found out about otters a lot further west and further north than we really had an idea that there were good populations. So it’s been really interesting.
Calkins says having extra sets of eyes looking for otters has been a boon to his research.
I was very surprised, but also pretty psyched. It was really neat to start getting some feedback from the radio program on something that we had been trying to do other ways and hadn’t been able to get there.
Researchers are interested in Texas river otters for more than their playful personalities.
They’re kind of an indicator species of how healthy our environment is. So, by trying to get a handle on how their population’s doing, it kind of tells us how our environment is doing overall.
If you spot an otter…on land or water…tell us about it …you know you ought to…at passporttotexas.org.
The Wildlife restoration program supports our series…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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