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Otters in this country are a conservation success story. When Paul Chanin first started studying otters their numbers were so low that they had disappeared entirely from most of England. Over the last forty years they have recovered until, in 2011, otters finally returned to Kent, and are once more present in every English county.
Paul Chanin has substantially updated his original book on otters for this new volume. He reports on the results of recent research studies and comments on what is now known about the causes of the decline and the eventual recovery of this charming – and still very elusive – mammal.
A feature of Otters is the beautiful and accurate line drawings and cartoons by renowned wildlife artist Guy Troughton. This special edition also features an eight-page gallery of stunning colour photographs.
Paul Chanin was lecturer in the Department of Adult Education at the University of Exeter from 1977 to 1998 and since then has worked as an independent ecological consultant specialising in mammals. He lives in Crediton, Devon.
"This is Paul Chanin’s third monograph on otters and I was fortunate enough to be asked to illustrate his first one, published in 1985. Paul and I have both lived through the rise and fall and then rise again of this beautiful native mammal and Paul’s latest contribution, beautifully presented by Whittet Books, can at last give a full account of what has happened.
Paul records how the otter hunts first noticed the decline in ottcr numbers, and by the 1960s Masters were seriously concerned. Paul shows how it was the shameful misuse of persistent chemicals that caused the catastrophic decline in otters and many other wildlife species during this period and we owe a great deal to his research and that of Don Jefferies of the Nature Conservancy Council, based on the Mammal Society surveys, for halting the decline.
This latest book by Paul, records that Kent, the last English County to recover a population ofotters, had done so by 2011. lt covers all aspects of otter biology, plus their relationship with the released North American mink, and Guy Troughton’s illustrations have been extended and added to with an amazing collection of colour photographs by the award-wvinning Laurie Campbell"
- Michael Clark, Country-Side, Spring & Summer 2013 issue
