Slater, Emmet, Olive, Olivia, and Emilia
by Dave Gibson
Though no definitive historic population numbers are available, river otters at one time numbered in the hundreds of thousands in the U.S. and Canada. Once one of the staples of the French fur trade, in the year 1800 alone there were 65,000 river otters harvested. By the turn of the nineteenth century, due to unregulated trapping, habitat loss, and pollution, there were estimated to be only 4,500 left in the continental United States. Extirpated from most Eastern and Midwestern states, it is only recently that river otter populations have begun to recover. Particularly sensitive to aquatic contamination, water pollution controls enacted in the 1970s have benefited the otter, as have newly instilled hunting and trapping regulations. Twenty-one states, including a large portion of the Rocky Mountain West, now have active reintroduction programs in place, where over one thousand have been released into the wild. Rocky Mountain National Park, Grand Lake, Boulder Creek, and the Western Slope are some of the places where otters can be found in Colorado. Currently listed as a species of least concern, there are estimated to be 100,000 river otters living in the U.S. today.
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