River otters are splashing around in New Mexico rivers this week for perhaps the first time in 60 years.
Five of the playful, furry creatures were released into the Rio Pueblo De Taos early Tuesday morning, after a long journey from their home state of Washington, where they were trapped.
“It was a long trip, and they went through quite an ordeal from capture to release,” said Darren Bruning, a biologist with the United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, who transported the otters on what must have been the strangest road trip of his life.
Bruning and a veterinarian wanted to make the trip as comfortable as possible for the otters. To that end, they fattened them up with fish and blasted the air conditioning in the van for the entire journey to make them feel at home. The humans even communicated by writing notes to each other so as to not frighten their critter companions.
If only the otters had been so courteous.
“It was an interesting drive to share a vehicle with five river otters,” Bruning said. “They certainly have a distinctive otter smell all their own.”
That strong, musky odor nearly blew the volunteers over as they opened the doors to the van after arriving on Taos Pueblo Sunday evening. They then loaded the otters into wooden crates built by the New Mexico Friends of River Otters and placed them at the river’s edge to get used to their surroundings.
For about eight years, the group — a coalition of citizens, agencies and conservation organizations — has been working to bring the otters back to New Mexico.
Tuesday’s release was organized by Taos Pueblo, state Game and Fish Department, the Bureau of Land Management and Friends of River Otters.
The last otter recorded in New Mexico was on the Gila, southeast of Cliff. A government trapper named “Shorty” Lyon found the otter dead in a beaver trap in 1953.
Other otter sightings since then have not been confirmed, although a University of New Mexico biologist found evidence of river otters at Navajo Reservoir in 2004. The speculation was that they might have been moving in from a reintroduced population in Colorado.
Colorado is one of 21 states that have been reintroducing the creature since 1976. One Louisiana trapping company in the 1980s and early ’90s supplied more than 2,400 otters to restoration projects.
Reasons for the otter’s popularity include its playfulness and downright cuteness. Otters frolic and cartwheel in the water and feast on crawfish, fish and the occasional frog or insect.
They’re highly social, with family groups consisting of a female and her most recent offspring.
“Adult males do not associate with families, but may congregate to form bachelor groups,” according to a 2006 Game and Fish report that studied the feasibility of otter releases.
But at least one of the male otters released Tuesday didn’t seem to stay a bachelor for long.
The otter crates were opened around 7:30 a.m., and almost immediately one of the older, larger otters — weighing in at nearly 30 pounds — bolted out and into the water.
“It just went straight into the river,” said Brian Shields executive director of Amigos Bravos, a river conservation group. “It just made a beeline for the river. I couldn’t even get a photograph it was so fast.”
The otter began lapping around the water and scurrying up the bank to see if his otter associates would join in. He even climbed up on a rock for a look around. “He was right at home and enjoying himself,” said Rachel Conn of Amigos Bravos.
Eventually, the Otter Five — two males and three females — were in the water.
Conservation groups and state and federal agencies on Tuesday plan to train volunteers to look for and recognize river otter signs as part of a monitoring program. Those signs include tracks in the snow, about the size that a small dog might leave, as well as piles of scat on rocks. But otters are charismatic creatures, so officials say boaters shouldn’t be surprised to see them.
Volunteers also hope to eventually release otters into the Gila River near Gila Hot Springs, though there are some Endangered Species Act issues that still need to be addressed.
As for the upper Rio Grande, the plan is to release more otters from Oregon sometime this fall, with the ultimate goal of up to 30 of the creatures over the next few years. Officials hope they’ll form selfsustaining populations.
And by the look of their plump, healthy figures, officials say the otters’ future looks promising.
As the volunteers were leaving Tuesday, they watched as one of the females swam upstream beside the big, bold male, a bachelor no more.
