Sea otter relocation program a failure, may end
Federal wildlife regulators admitted Wednesday that a "no-otter zone" established in Southern California 24 years ago was a failure and proposed scrapping the experimental program to establish a sea otter colony on a remote island off Santa Barbara.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will take comments for 60 days before making a final decision on whether to end the so-called southern sea otter translocation program. The program, which has long been considered a mistake by otter lovers, "is not meeting its objectives for restoring the species," the agency said in a news release.
"We've learned a lot during the course of the translocation program, and as a result have fundamentally changed our recovery strategy," said Ren Lohoefener, the regional director of the wildlife service's Pacific Southwest Region. "Our experience strongly suggests that the best course of action is to allow sea otters to expand naturally into Southern California waters."
The announcement was met with the online equivalent of whoops and fist pumps by conservation groups.
"Today is a good day for California sea otters," Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Sea Otter, the Humane Society of the United States and the Monterey Bay Aquarium wrote in a joint statement. "We support an end to the ineffective and harmful translocation program and 'no-otter' management zone."
The decision was a long time in coming. Federal officials admitted as far back as 2005 that their efforts to restore California's ravaged sea otter population by relocating the furry creatures to San Nicolas Island was a failure.
Between 1987 and 1991, 140 otters were captured and placed on San Nicolas, the southernmost of the Channel Islands, but most of them immediately vanished. Around 40 otters remain there today.
The southern sea otter, or Enhydra lutris nereis, has a voracious appetite and particularly likes sea urchins. The otters are the smallest marine mammals in U.S. waters, and their use of tools to break open their food makes them unique.
Thousands of otters once roamed the waters from Alaska's Prince William Sound to Baja California. Unfortunately for them, their soft, thick fur was considered a luxury starting in the late 1700s, and fur hunters killed them by the thousands. By the beginning of the Gold Rush, sea otters were nearly extinct and their pelts were worth more than gold.
They were believed extinct until the 1930s when a small population of about 50 was discovered near Big Sur. The animals have been listed since 1977 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The San Nicolas plan was proposed in a 1982 Fish and Wildlife Service report called the Southern Sea Otter Recovery Plan. It said a large oil spill could kill all the remaining sea otters and proposed creating a reserve population that could ensure survival of the species in the event of a catastrophe.
Lobbying by sea urchin harvesters and offshore oil interests, however, resulted in a compromise establishing a "no-otter zone" from Point Conception, 40 miles north of Santa Barbara, to the Mexican border, including all of the Channel Islands except San Nicolas.
Most of the otters that were moved died or swam back to the places they were taken from, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Fish and Wildlife patrols captured some of the strays but largely gave up the practice after it became clear it was not going to work.
"What has been happening up until now is that we have essentially cordoned off an area in the water with an imaginary line," said Jim Curland, a marine program associate for Defenders of Wildlife. "This will remove that barrier."
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