AdventuresInNature

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They are beautiful to watch – two globs of black quicksilver pulsating, twisting and chasing each other among the stone ledges that serrate the North Fork of the Holston River in the mountains of Southwest Virginia.

I am standing as mute and still as a post along the bank of the river, watching two otters chase each other like kittens.

River otters apparently live to do only two things; play and eat fish. They also find time to sneak in a bit of lovemaking somewhere along the way, because their numbers are increasing.
It is the increasing numbers, coupled with an insatiable appetite for bluegill, smallmouth bass and channel catfish, that is causing the otters’ human neighbors to brand them as thieves who’ve moved next door, and not aquatic acrobats who never stop practicing.

More than a decade ago, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries began restocking modest numbers of otters in the state’s remote streams. The otters obviously liked the situation. After all, before trapping wiped the handsome fur-bearers out of existence a century ago, these Eastern rivers were the otters’ ancestral home.

As so often happens, though, when the needs and desires of people and wildlife collide, wildlife ultimately loses the turf battle.

People on every river with otters that I’ve talked with are convinced that these agile predators are taking a toll on native fish.

"It’s nothing to look out these days and see a series of white fish bellies floating down the river," says one resident whose house overlooks the Holston. "That’s when I know the otters are up-river, feeding again."

Residents are mumbling about employing their own "population control" methods – the foundation of which is a high-powered rifle – even though killing otters is as illegal as sin.

I think the otter-restocking program has gone awry, and local people along the state’s rivers will restore what they see as an imbalance – too many otter, fewer fish.

Of course, there are cormorants and osprey competing for fish in Virginia rivers now too. These fish-eating birds weren’t around 25 years ago either.)

Whether it’s right or wrong to shoot otters is not a matter that residents along rivers seem to lose sleep over. For that reason, I suspect I’d better remain still and watch the animals cavort as long as I can.

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