ARCHIVED - Otter on the streets of Murcia!

The otter has returned to Murcia after becoming extinct in the city last century

Residents of the Infante Don Juan Manuel district of Murcia were stunned on Monday morning to see a wild otter scuttling through the streets, where it presumably had made its way from the southern bank of the River Segura.

Running along Calle Miguel Hernández and Avenida San Juan de la Cruz, the otter was pursued by officers of the Policía Local and staff from the wildlife recovery centre in El Valle, with great care being taken to ensure that it was not run over or harmed in any other way. Eventually it found its way back to the river and jumped down to the water before swimming away, apparently none the worse for wear.

In recent years the otter, which at one point was close to extinction in the Region of Murcia, has become something of a symbol of the new, clean Segura since its reappearance in and around the city. Over the last twenty years the River Segura has ceased to be one of the most polluted rivers in Spain due to a concerted effort to put an end to the dumping of toxic waste in the water and to improve purification and other water treatment procedures.

As a result, fishermen can now be seen every day on the banks of the river in the centre of Murcia, and on occasion swimmers have even been known to jump in for a dip: this would have been unthinkable 25 years ago.

The reappearance of the otter came with the discovery of the first footprints and droppings for decades near the Contraparada, a dam and weir which were built upstream from Murcia in the 9th and 10th centuries in order to protect the Moorish city from flooding. However, when photographic proof of the presence of this elusive and usually nocturnal animal was provided in 2013 it was in the Barriomar district, in the western outskirts of the city of Murcia.

That the otter has become synonymous with the recovery of the River Segura in Murcia is due to the fact that it feeds almost exclusively on fish, which until a few years ago were not in sufficient supply in the river to sustain an otter population.

Having disappeared from Murcia decades ago, the otter has now made a timid return to the Region, with the population in 2013 estimated to have reached between 35 and 40. At that point the animals were reported to be distributed along 378 kilometres of river in Murcia, including the whole of the length of the Segura.

The main threats to the species are the destruction, fragmentation and pollution of its natural river-bank habitat, including the drying-up of rivers in times of drought, although at the same times reports of otters being run over are unfortunately not infrequent.

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