Sports

By Tom Venesky tvenesky@timesleader.com
Sports Reporter
Tom Venesky on Facebook   |   TLTomVenesky on Twitter

If the Pennsylvania Game Commission ever implements a trapping season for otters, Jim Kauffman will have an upper hand on most trappers.

click image to enlarge

Jim Kauffman holds an adult female otter that he captured last October in the Big Bushkill Creek in Porter Township, Pike County. The otter was captured and released as part of a study conducted by Kauffman and East Stroudsburg University.

Submitted photo

click image to enlarge

Sam Loffredo and Jim Kauffman set a trap to capture otters in Pike County for a research project.

Submitted photo

Select images available for purchase in the
Times Leader Photo Store

Otter season considered

Pennsylvania Game Commission officials haven’t implemented an otter season, but they have said the idea is on the radar. Kauffman, who has worked with the PGC on its fisher program, had mixed feelings about an otter trapping season. “I can see both sides of the issue. As a sportsman, I’d love the opportunity to trap one, but I think it’s important to maintain the population,” he said. “Just being able to see one is a thrill, and I don’t think we’re at the point yet to implement a season and a harvest.

“What the PGC did with starting a fisher season – they obtained plenty of data first. We’re still in the process of doing that with otters.”

Species native to Pa.

River otters are native to Pennsylvania and they are a member of the weasel (mustelid) family, which also includes mink, weasels, badger and the wolverine. A mature male otter can weigh up to 25 pounds and measure 40 inches in length. Females are slightly smaller. Otters have two fur layers – a short, dense underfur and longer guard hairs – that combine with a layer of fat to insulate their bodies. They can travel underwater for a quarter of a mile without coming up for air.

Fish the most popular meal

What does an otter eat? Here is what Jim Kauffman found in the stomachs of otters from both Pennsylvania and New Jersey:

Fish - 93 percent of the stomachs

Crayfish - 26 percent of the stomachs

Other - snakes, muskrats and salamanders

Types of fish eaten by otters, according to Kauffman’s research:

Bass and sunfish - 46 percent of the stomachs

Suckers - 22 percent of the stomachs

Minnows - 16 percent of the stomachs

Trout - 11 percent of the stomachs

Kauffman, who is a graduate student at East Stroudsburg University, already has trapped four otters in Pike County last year. While it isn’t legal to harvest otters in Pennsylvania, Kauffman wasn’t trapping the aquatic furbearers for their fur. He wanted their data.

Kauffman, who has a special permit from the PGC to trap otters, is in the second year of a study that will shed light on the furbearers’ range, diet, biology and habitat, among other things. The study, which was funded by a grant from the Pennsylvania Trappers Association, is part of Kauffman’s master’s thesis, and it is already yielding some interesting results.

Equipped with #2 leghold traps outfitted with padded jaws, Kauffman is focusing his trapping efforts in Pike and Monroe counties – two places that hold decent numbers of otters, he said. When an otter is caught, Kauffman injects it with a sedative, removes the animal from the trap and takes it to a nearby veterinarian who surgically implants a transmitter in its abdomen. Radio collars won’t work on otters because they don’t stay on the animal’s sleek neck, he said.

The bulk of Kauffman’s work, however, involves just getting close enough to the agitated otter to inject the sedative.

“It’s interesting. They’re not too pleasant to be around,” he said. “They really like to spin and roll, so we try to immobilize them and then inject the sedative. There haven’t been close calls yet.”

The otters are then released back to the area where they were trapped, and Kauffman, who is aided by undergraduate student Sam Loffredo in the field, makes frequent visits to the site to see what the animal is up to.

“They really move a lot and have quite extensive home ranges,” Kauffman said, regarding the data yielded by the four female otters he trapped last year. “We’re finding that they are basically using stream corridors to travel to different impoundments.”

But there has been at least one temporary exception.

This winter Kauffman tracked one of his otters to a lake that was completely frozen over for weeks. Puzzled by how the otter was able to survive for such a long period under the ice, Kauffman searched for an answer.

He found one in an abandoned beaver lodge.

“She was going inside abandoned beaver lodges to get out of the water and get air,” he said. “One day we tracked her we stood on top of a lodge and could hear her moving around inside.

“As soon as the ice started to melt, she moved on.”

Otters were extirpated from most of Pennsylvania at one time, but a population remained in the Poconos where wetlands and streams are plentiful, Kauffman said. In 1982, East Stroudsburg University and the PGC began a reintroduction effort and today, with the combination of cleaner water, otters have expanded their numbers and range throughout the state.

“They are stable and probably increasing,” Kauffman said. “In the past 25 years there has definitely been an increase in incidental captures by trappers.”

While the movement part of the study has produced interesting results, so to has the diet component. To study the otters’ diet, Kauffman relies on carcasses given to him by the PGC from incidental catches and from trappers in New Jersey, where otter trapping is legal. By analyzing the stomach contents and intestinal tract of each carcass, Kauffman has found that fish make up the majority of the otters’ diet, followed by crayfish. He also has found snakes and salamanders in the stomachs, along with eels and muskrat bones in otters from New Jersey.

As far as the belief that otters can decimate fish populations, such as trout, in a given area, Kauffman has his doubts.

Bass, bluegills, suckers and minnows account for most of the fish species consumed by otters that Kauffman has studied, and trout make up a mere 10 percent. Still, Kauffman’s research was done in the winter when stocked trout are few, and he admitted they would make an easy meal for an otter.

“The hatchery-reared stocked trout are bigger and don’t have the anti-predatory defenses like our native brook trout,” Kauffman said. “But as far as cleaning out a pond, an otter is never a resident of a pond long enough to do that. They move often enough and eat other things.”

Other aspects of Kauffman’s otter research include genetic work and studies on parasites and pathogens. He is assisted by graduate students Kim Harle and Leilani Palmer in those areas.

This year Kauffman hopes to capture an additional five to 10 otters in the Poconos and outfit them with transmitters. He hopes to wrap the study up by 2011.

“Otters are such unique animals. They’re perfect carnivores,” Kauffman said. “The fact that they’re here and you rarely see them shows just how nocturnal and elusive they are. To have them here is a pretty neat thing.”