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A3 THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2020 Sea otters could return to Oregon Coast Study to look at reintroduction By TOM BANSE Northwest News Network A group that wants to bring back wild sea otters to the Oregon Coast is taking a big step forward. The federal government has awarded them a grant to launch a fea- sibility study for a possible reintroduction effort. Once upon a time, sea otters were abundant along Oregon’s Pacifi c coast. But then fur hunters wiped them out more than a century ago. Sea otters were successfully reintroduced to Califor- nia, Washington state, Brit- ish Columbia and southeast Alaska 50 years ago. But the animals have not naturally repopulated to Oregon in the time since. The nonprofi t that wants to restore sea otters to Ore- gon is named the Elakha Alliance, after the word for sea otter in the Clatsop-Chi- nookan language. “Yes, they’re cute, but that’s not the reason we’re doing this,” said Bob Bai- ley, board president of the Elakha Alliance. “They’re a keystone species ... The eco- system and its productiv- ity and its resilience off the Oregon Coast has undoubt- edly been compromised over what it would be if they were here.” Among other things, sea otters keep sea urchins in check. Urchins mow down underwater kelp forests. So if sea otters came back, Bai- ley said you should get more kelp forests. Kelp provides shelter and food for a range of sea life and sequesters carbon. Bailey said he was “totally thrilled” to win $40,000 in funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser- vice to conduct a feasibility study of sea otter reintroduc- tion in Oregon. “It means everything to us,” Bailey said. “This is the keyhole through which the key will fi t or not. Every- thing else will depend on the outcome of this feasibility study.” Bailey described the upcoming April launch of the study to attendees at the recent annual meeting in Eugene of the Oregon chap- ter of The Wildlife Society, a professional group for biol- ogists, ecologists and land managers. U.S. Fish and Wild- life Service fi eld supervi- sor Michele Zwartjes dis- cussed the many issues on the minds of the federal and state agencies that will have the fi nal say on the possible Lilian Carswell/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service A raft of California sea otters. Tom Banse/Northwest News Network Currently, the only places to see sea otters in Oregon are at the Oregon Zoo and the Oregon Coast Aquarium. restoration of sea otters to the Oregon Coast. “Do we have enough suitable habitat?” Zwartjes asked rhetorically. “Do we have suffi cient prey? What will the effects be on the community and on other species?” Zwartjes stressed that the Fish and Wildlife Service funding for the feasibility study is purely “exploratory” and does not presuppose an eventual green light for sea otter reintroduction. She said the human dimension to the matter would be “just as important” as the biological or ecological considerations. “Is there public support for it? What would the effect be on local economies along the coast?” she continued. “There could be some pos- itive effects and negative effects. But we think it is important to lay all of those out so the public is fully informed and understands what the potential ramifi - cations of a reintroduction could mean.” Super-cute sea otters could be good for tourism. But the fi shing industry is wary. One of the things sea otters eat is Dungeness crab, which happens to be Ore- gon’s single most valuable commercial fi shery. “We’re going to proceed with obvious concern and caution,” said Tim Novotny, communications manager at the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. “Sea otters have not reacted well with the fi sh- ery in other places,” he said, mentioning Alaska specifi cally. There is also a modest sea urchin fi shery in south- ern Oregon. Bailey said he has already been in touch with those commercial fi sh- ing boat captains, too. Both fans and skeptics are mindful that sea otters have a high metabolism and need to eat a lot to survive. Seattle Aquarium curator of conser- vation research Shawn Lar- son said they consume 25% of their body weight in food every day. The Oregon C oast is a busy place and not as pris- tine as it once was. Yet Lar- son, a longtime sea otter expert, said if otters can bounce back off central Cal- ifornia, it can probably hap- pen in Oregon too. “That’s a very populated coastline around Monterey,” she said. “They found this estuary, Elkhorn Slough. They’re like, ‘OK , it’s pro- tected. We know there are a lot of people. We’re not sure what will happen. Let’s just put some otters there and see how it goes.’ Huge success. I think there’s now around 100 sea otters that live there.” Larson is involved in monitoring the fl ourishing sea otter populations on the wild Washington and Brit- ish Columbia coastline. The rafts of sea otters seen there now are descended from a small number of animals transplanted from Alaska between 1969-71. Sea otters released off of the south- ern Oregon Coast during the same time period mysteri- ously vanished after a few years. Bailey said he hopes to have the feasibility study ready for public review in draft form by next winter. The Elakha Alliance said reintroduction studies, con- sensus building and permit- ting might add up to many years before any sea otters could possibly be captured from an as yet unidenti- fi ed donor population and moved to Oregon. A newly published study by a master’s student in the Marine Mammal Institute of Oregon State University found there is suitable hab- itat along the Oregon Coast to support around 4,500 res- ident sea otters, setting aside for a moment the potential disturbance from human activities. Oregon’s south- ern coastline with its many rocky headlands and bull kelp forests had the great- est amount of high quality habitat. However, study author Dominique Kone cau- tioned that wildlife man- agers would have to con- sider a range of overlapping human uses that could infl u- ence the success of any rein- troduction. He identifi ed the sea urchin fi shery as hav- ing the greatest interac- tion potential, along with other commercial fi sheries, recreational boating, ship- ping traffi c and wildlife watching. Strong support for reintro- duction comes from coastal tribes, notably the Confed- erated Tribes of Siletz Indi- ans and the Coquille Indian Tribe. At the wildlife sci- ence conference in Eugene, Peter Hatch, a cultural resources technician for the Siletz tribe and an Elakha Alliance board member, described the importance of sea otters to his people. He noted that a luxuriously soft sea otter pelt was once one of the most valuable posses- sions a tribal member could own or give away. “We fi nd ourselves at a moment of opportunity,” said Hatch. “But so many things have to go right if we are going to eventually be able to bring otters back to the Oregon Coast.” Sea otters were hunted to local extinction off the Pacifi c Northwest coast as part of the fur trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Elakha Alliance recently got word that it won a second grant, this one from the Portland-based Meyer Memorial Trust. The two- year, $110,000 award will allow the Elakha Alliance to hire a communications and outreach contractor who will be assigned to build sup- port for sea otter restoration along the Oregon Coast. 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