Eurasian otters have recovered across Britain following water quality improvements and legal protection, with individual welfare linked directly to river habitat quality and prey availability.
Otter welfare recovery is a genuine environmental success story: animals whose welfare was catastrophically compromised by organochlorine poisoning, persecution, and water pollution now live in clean rivers with recovering prey populations. Individual otter welfare is directly linked to river health — otters in clean, fish-rich rivers with low road crossing frequency live long, healthy lives expressing their full natural behaviour. The welfare lessons of otter recovery — clean water, legal protection, habitat connectivity — are directly applicable to other declining species.