Cornwall Otter Group

Cornwall Otter Group (COG) is a county-wide group run by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust (CWT) and sponsored by the Environment Agency (EA). Volunteers with Cornwall Otter Group are fondly known as 'Otter Spotters' and include fishermen, farmers, students, people working in conservation or those who just want to know more, such as retired people.

The training day consists of two parts. First of all there is a slide talk covering otter ecology, field signs and threats; their status nationally, regionally and locally; the range of advisory work and partners; the importance of volunteers; publicity and awareness; other semi-aquatic mammals and ways to get involved. This is followed by a field trip – along a river looking for otter signs, how otters use the habitat, identifying potential threats and recording other wildlife. We will provide you with an Equipment Check List, Identification Cards, Health and Safety Advice, Surveying Notes and Forms, references for further Recommended Reading and Otter Contacts details.

Annual Cornwall Otter Group outing
Photograph by Kate Stokes

As an 'Otter Spotter' you will receive training to become confident enough to identify otter signs.  You can then send in ad hoc records when you’re out walking, or may like to adopt and monitor one or more of the 232 base line survey sites. You could also have the opportunity to help collect otter corpses for post mortem or may occasionally be asked to help build an artificial log pile holt. As well as receiving special invitations once in a while to events such as walks (on private lnd looking at land management), talks (with local/regional experts) and conferences (with national experts) and workshops with special training (such as spraint analysis), you will be invited to our annual Otter Spotter Jolly once a year.

By volunteering as an 'Otter Spotter' we hope to be able to determine otter status and population distribution, including hot spot areas. We also hope to be able to identify changes in seasonal behaviour (such as diet). We have very few breeding recordings and would like to collate these to identify particularly sensitive areas. It would also be good to assess the relationship between our native otters and the introduced American mink, so if you see a mink or its signs do let us know that too. We plan to assess habitat quality including river management, fish status and water quality and to identify key problems such as road black spots or assess the threat of climate change. Your surveying and monitoring will be helping with all this vital otter research. 

Other pages on this web site that may be of interest:

• Mammals in Cornwall
• Cornwall Otter diary
• Send us your Cornish otter records
• Cornwall Mammal Group
• Wildlife Veterinary Investigation Centre
• Bodyline
• Water for Wildlife

Other web sites that may be of interest:

• Visit the Cornwall Biodiversity Initiative web site for species action Plan
• Visit the National Biodiversity Network for a selection of datasets identified as important by RDS and DEFRA for assessing agri-environment schemes, collected by the Environmental Records Centre for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

Cornwall's Nature Introduction Marine life Mammals .. Bats .. Bottlenose dolphins .. Grey seals .. Hedgehogs .. Otters .. Watervoles Wildlife gardening Invertebrates Herptofauna .. Reptiles .. Amphibians Geology Slugs and snails SEARCH . . . . . . . . .