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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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