For the California folk in this forum I wanted to put this issue on your radar. Since 1987, a "No-Otter" Zone has existed in Southern California extending from Santa Barbara in the north, to the Mexico border in the south. Wildlife officials say sea otter restrictions should be abandoned - Los Angeles Times There are three public hearings by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service coming up in Ventura, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz about the future of the zone and whether it should be removed or not. There is a website Free the Otters run by the non-profit I work for (The Otter Project) mentioned in the LA Times article above that has a bunch of resources and information around the issue. Thought it might be of interest to the folks here to discuss.
The otter exclusion zone was stupid and otter have been abandoned a long time ago. Finally nature is running its course. I would greatly welcome the day that sea otters return to the coasts of Malibu and Ventura. It will be a wonderful thing if their natural range expands back into what it was before the Russians clubbed them all to death (except for the miracle surviving population in Monterey) in the 1800s. Welcome home otters!
I can't understand how the Endangered Species Act could permit such a stupid action in the first place. If you can't destroy a habitat belonging to a listed species, then how can it permit a ban on the animals habitat? Hix
My understanding is that it was a political compromise to allow the establishment of a second population of sea otters to be established in Southern California. This increase in otter range was opposed by fishing interests who saw otters as competitors for shellfish. The US Fish and Wildlife Service wanted to establish a second otter population in case something catastrophic happened to the population in Central California. The compromise lead to the attempt to re-establish the population that has historically existed in the California Channel Islands. The compromise was that otters would be stopped from spreading south of Santa Barbara by returning them back to Central California. The attempt to establish the Channel Islands population failed when the otters went back to Central California. Now the powers that be apparently see stopping the otters from naturally spreading as futile and will remove the legal barriers that were imposed to this happening (not that the otters ever cared about that, scofflaws that they are). I think that I have the gist of this right. If not, someone please correct me and fill in any gaps I missed. In any case the return of sea otters to Southern California would be ecologically sound and extremely welcome for most people. Hopefully they will come back.
@DavidBrown - thanks for the extra info, but it still puzzles me as to how, after all the publicity surrounding the Spotted Owl and old growth forests, they can say "The otter's range includes southern california, but we'll exclude it from there because of commercial interests". Anyway, it seems the powers that be have returned from the dark side and plan on making things right again. Hix
You are right in there with many of us in trying to figure out the logic behind ESA decisions. Sometimes decisions are mostly political without much discernible scientific logic. One of the high profile examples now is the delisting of grey wolves in the Yellowstone region. Their recovery is a spectacular success, but now threatened potentially. The ESA will always be a political beast unfortunately, but at least it exists, as greatly imperfect as it is.
