The otter that came back after 200 years: a trail camera catches the San Mateo Coast's missing swimmer

Checking a trail camera is usually routine — but at Cloverdale Ranch Open Space Preserve, near Pescadero on California's San Mateo Coast, researcher Ken Hickman found a North American river otter looking back at him. The cameras caught the otter three times, in July, August and September, and biologists believe it is the first river otter known on this coast since the 1800s, when the fur trade nearly wiped the animals out along California's shores. Otters only settle where the water is clean and food is plentiful, so Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District biologist Matt Sharp Chaney reads the visit as a health report: a coast that can again support the fish an otter needs, including coho salmon and steelhead trout. The ranch itself was saved from development in 1997 and is now protected open space — and, a century on, one of its missing residents has found its way home.

SDG 15 · Life on land