Otters on the Cale!
- By Matt Bishop
- August 22, 2020
- 1 Comment
As with any river restoration project, as the pieces of nature’s puzzle fall into place, so does the food chain. CATCH are very proud of the river condition, and nature’s restoration. First we removed the rubbish, then we helped educate people. With the cleaner river came higher invertebrate numbers in the water, and we were able to return native species of fish to our town section after several pollution incidents. The town have allowed us to create habitat all along the town stretch of river, where we have now seen Dippers and Kingfishers returning.
To compliment the smaller creatures in and around our river, CATCH can confirm that Otters have returned to the Cale……Keep your eyes peeled for them but please do not interfere with them as they are only recently established. Onward and upward!
Somerset Otter Group has been monitoring a 2 mile stretch of the Cale from Wincanton towards Charlton Musgrove since January 2017 and has found definite signs of otters throughout that time including signs that they had been feeding on signal crayfish. There was no regular monitoring before that but Somerset Environmental Records Centre has a report of a dead otter on this stretch from 2007.