This free walking trail will introduce to you Cork City's 'Pana otter' population
A yellow-footed egret and otters seen in Cork city — River Bride at Orchard Court. Pictures: Chris Moody
“There! Is that one?” Chris points excitedly at the riverbank, peering through his binoculars studiously.
“Ah, a moorhen,” he says, a little deflated, but pausing long enough with the binoculars to admire its red beak and downy black feathers. “Sometimes you see egrets too, they wear 'marigold gloves'.”
I’m walking the Cork Otter Trail with Chris Moody, a fervent local otter campaigner who, if they had organised religion, would probably be a saint of theirs. He got a particular affinity for the charming fluffy creatures that quietly dot the banks of the Lee.
“Some people can spend years looking and they never see anything,” he says, scanning the exposed banks.
He’s full of otter tales: “I’ve seen them catching crabs in there,” he points to a shallow part of the river, “and the otters in the city, they’ll look right back up at you. There’s a video I got of one eating crabs and it’s staring up at me.”
Click here to reserve a spot on the next Cork City Otter Trail.
Chris regularly walks the trail, which runs from Fitzgerald Park to the Christy Ring Bridge, and sees otters about once every five visits. The key to spotting them is patience aplenty and knowing the signs. “You’re looking for calm water, and a little head that’s kind of V-ing through the water. There’s only one thing that moves like that and at that speed. It’s like a little motorboat.” And although mothers usually keep their pups out of sight, eagle-eared walkers might pick up on their distinctive cry. “It’s like a squeaky toy that’s broken, halfway between a whistle and a wheeze,” Chris says with a smile.
Want to learn more about otters? 🦦
— Nature Network Ireland (@natnetireland) December 14, 2022
We are happy to offer a guided walk along the Cork City Otter Trail on Jan 7th. Join us for a walk led by CNNs Campaign Manager John Armstrong.
Start: Opera House 11:00am
Finish: Fitzgerald's park 11:30am
Register at: https://t.co/PEpZSCV5a5 pic.twitter.com/VAqu9Riz7o
Cork Nature Network, of which Chris is a member, set up the riverside otter trail in 2020, and has been spearheading an otter awareness campaign in the city since 2016. The threats posed by Blackpool’s proposed flood relief scheme has galvanised support for Cork’s urban otters, whose numbers could collapse if the plans came to be.
The scheme, designed by the Office of Public Works (OPW), would culvert 350 metres of The River Bride, a vital artery for wildlife. Culverting is essentially sending the river through a large pipe, which would starve the river of light and kill off the ecosystem of birds, fish and the otters that feed on them.
This incenses Chris. His group, Save Our Bride Otters, has been locked in a legal battle with the OPW for nearly two years, arguing that culverting would sterilise the river and harm the local otter population. The State conceded on one of their grounds — insufficient public consultation — in January last, but there remain many hurdles before the plan is replaced with one compatible with the local ecosystem.
Chris says Blackpool’s flooding could be solved without severing this vital wildlife corridor: “The solution is upstream storage, which would also be cheaper. I know from Freedom of Information requests that it was considered but dismissed without proper consideration.” Poor planning is also behind the flooding, he says. “There was this massive shopping centre [in Blackpool] built on a floodplain. I went into the planning office and dug through planning applications. I found so many planning issues. Six years later, and I’m still at it."
Today, Blackpool and The River Bride is a hub for Cork’s beloved otters, and otter-aware design touches like raised ledges on the underpass have helped them thrive. Their hunting grounds span several kilometres, meaning that if The Bride’s flood scheme goes ahead, Cork’s reputation as a unique urban stronghold for otters could be placed in jeopardy.
Little egret with its distinctive marigold glove feet at Orchard Court, Blackpool this morning. #cork pic.twitter.com/dQmmGtYXwl
— Save Our Bride Otters (@savebrideotters) December 17, 2022
Patrick Sleeman, researcher at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences in UCC, says the success of otters in Cork City up to now has been incredible: “It was a real turn up for the books that they occurred in urban areas at all, and happily we have a higher density than they seem to have in Dublin." There are about 11 otters in the city, his research in partnership with the South East Technological University shows, and at least eight of them frequent The River Bride.
When I balk at what seems to me like a small number, I get an excitable response. “11 is incredible, pal! That’s an apex predator. It’s kind of like finding giant pandas swimming around the sewers of Beijing!”
Even more exciting to Patrick is he reckons many of them are ‘Pana otters’ — born in the city and reared with an urbanite mindset. “That’s why they do so well, their mothers have shown them around. They understand the city.” There have been a few reports of otters being knocked down in Cork, but Patrick reckons those are ‘country bumpkins’ on a metropolitan misadventure, not their traffic-savvy urban brethren.
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Despite his cheeriness though, there are storms brewing — both literal and figurative — for our furry friends. Like Chris, he’s worried about what the hard infrastructure employed in flooding schemes will do to their habitats, but also says the increasing frequency of climate change-induced flooding could wash otter pups out to sea. And because they can’t swim for the first few months of their life, they would drown.
“About three pups are born a year in the city. If otter breeding was going on and big floods occurred, we could lose a whole generation of otters.”
As it stands though, Cork has a vibrant otter population to be proud of, even if they’re a shy bunch. Chris and I waited for 40 minutes on the banks, but no otter emerged. “A pessimist can only ever be pleasantly surprised, an optimist can only ever be disappointed,” he said, laughing.
But I couldn’t help but disagree. I would consider myself an optimist, but I was anything but disappointed. I hadn’t seen an otter, sure, but I had seen something more; the passion ignited by a love of nature, and the lengths someone will go to protect it. And that is worth any walk.
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