Garden ponds 'ransacked' by cheeky York otters

BBC News

2 days ago

Residents of rural villages who were mystified when fish kept disappearing from their garden ponds have found the culprit - mischievous otters from a recovering population of the animals.Margaret Wilcock was puzzled when she began finding "circles of fish scales" on her lawn in Copmanthorpe, near York, and Heath Sykes in neighbouring Acaster Malbis lost all 56 of his fish, causing him to abandon his pond completely.It was only when night vision cameras were set up in the gardens that the otters' nocturnal raids were revealed.Otters were nearly considered extinct in the 1970s, but their numbers have since increased and there are believed to be 11,000 of them in the UK.
Mrs Wilcock's husband set the camera trap which captured an otter "chewing the head off" one of their koi carp, and Mr Sykes trained his home CCTV onto his pond.He said: "It was a couple of otters eating away merrily through the night. They cleared my large pond in five days."Mrs Wilcock said another house on Moor Lane in Copmanthorpe had also had a pond "ransacked" and she had heard of other ornamental water features being "decimated" in the local area.Residents of nearby New Earswick and Haxby said they had also had similar experiences with otters.
Mrs Wilcock said: "We found one big fish in the bushes at the back of the pond. I don't know whether the otter was disturbed and left it, or if it was just too big and too heavy for it. And that was the only one we found. But it was dead, of course. All the others had eaten every scrap, nothing left."We put a net over the pond and it deterred them for a few weeks, and then they started again - they ate a hole in the net and took the rest of them."Her original suspects were cats, foxes and herons, but she called the discovery a "nice surprise" and the otters "pretty cute".Otter expert Jason Palmer from The Otter Specialist Group said otters are "opportunists."
Mr Palmer said a female otter would have a 12km-14km stretch of river as her territory, which is an area she protects, patrols and hunts in. Males can have up to 40km."If they happen to come across a pond and it's full of fish, yeah, it's like a sweet shop. It's easy - it's like a vending machine I suppose."Of the 14 species of otter across the world, only one is found in the UK, the Eurasian otter."Obviously this time of year, summer, and the fact we've had not a lot of rain, river levels will be low, therefore fish stocks will probably be lower, there's less food available, so they'll have to travel more in order to find food."
The Wilcocks have now embraced their night-time visitors and do not plan to restock their pond."When we first netted it we were thinking, let's hope it will keep them out, but they're pretty determined. So we're not worried about it anymore, they can come and just enjoy it, we enjoy it, and if any fish survive they survive."We're just hoping to attract more dragonflies, frogs, and we don't mind if the otters come back, you know, we'll just go with it. We're not going to net it."
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