'Keep your eyes peeled' - Irish wildlife group calls on public to report otter sightings

An Irish wildlife organisation is calling on the public to report otter sightings. 

The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is launching a new National Otter Survey to map otters and compare results to the previous survey carried out thirteen years ago.

NPWS teams will be looking for characteristic signs of otters at over 900 sites throughout the country, including rivers, lakes and the coast.  

Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform, Malcolm Noonan, said, "While NPWS teams will be out conducting fieldwork research, people can play their part in giving us a complete picture of otter numbers in the country so we want as much public participation as possible on this.

"The public plays an important role in research such as this that ultimately helps us to develop the evidence to inform policy. Otters can be hard to find and mainly forage at night so keep your eyes peeled if you’re visiting a coastal, river or lake environment in the evening or night time and make sure to let us know if you’ve seen one." 

Mammal Specialist with the NPWS, Dr Ferdia Marnell, emphasised, "The otter is one of Ireland’s most elusive animals so getting as many people involved in the survey as possible will be important if we are to get good coverage. Otters are rarely seen, so instead, over the coming months, NPWS staff will be searching for otter tracks and signs. 

"Otters have large, webbed feet and leave distinctive footprints, but these can be hard to find. Fortunately, otters mark their territory using droppings known as ‘spraints’. Otters deposit spraints conspicuously on boulders along riverbanks, logs on lake shores or the rocky high tide line.

"Spraints can be up to 10 cm or 3 inches long, black through to white but commonly brown, tarry to powdery in consistency and straight or curved making them tricky to identify. Luckily, they commonly contain fish bones and crayfish shells which are the otters favoured diet making them easy to tell apart from the droppings of birds and other mammals." 

According to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, otters - which are brown and about 80cm (30 inches) long - are mostly active at night and typically seen at dawn or dusk.

They may be spotted from bridges gliding along the surface of rivers or along rocky seashore before diving to show their distinctive long pointed tail which is almost as long again as their body. 

The otter suffered significant declines across the UK and much of continental Europe during the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s but remained widespread in Ireland, with the most recent survey (2010-2011) finding signs of otter from all counties of Ireland and from sea-shore to mountain streams. 

The otter hunts in water, but spends much of its time on land, and as a result is vulnerable to river corridor management such as culverting, dredging and the clearance of bankside vegetation, as well as pollution, pesticides, oil spillages, coastal developments and road traffic. 

Members of the public submit recordings of otter sightings at the National Biodiversity Data Centre’s dedicated webpage available here. 

The final report on how the otter is faring will be published in 2025.