91热爆

Ian Bond from Hartlepool Council and Mike Leakey from Natural England took 91热爆 Tees to a secret location at the mouth of the River Tees, where they're hoping they can persuade the new arrivals to set up home.

"We're delighted ... They've never been recoded there before, so it came as a bit of a surprise to us all."

Mike Leakey, Natural England

Huntsman Pigments, who run the nearby Icon II plant has got involved, as have students on the Environmental Conservation course at East Durham College at Houghall. They have installed artificial otter homes, known as holts.

Ian explained how they work, "It's a breeze block chamber, maybe four foot by two foot, divided into two sections and leading from that, we've got some pipes leading down here, maybe about four metres long and the purpose of those is to keep out the light, so it's really quite secluded."

The holts have been designed to give the otters somewhere to sleep and, more importantly, says Ian, somewhere to breed. "Being fairly hardy animals, they could just be living out in the open, just in patches of reed, or under bushes like this, but when it comes to breeding, females need somewhere more secluded, somewhere with a bit more room and so that might be a limiting factor for otters to establish here."

Ian Bond shows us the otter holt

Until the 1960s, seeing otters in Britain was nothing special, but the last half century has seen them fall to near extinction in much of the country and since that population crash was largely blamed on man-made pollution, seeing them back on a river that was for so long an industrial sewer is particularly good news, says Mike.

"Otters are top predators and 80 per cent or more of their diet is composed of fish, so in those terms it signifies that the estuary has significantly improved. I mean, as recently as the 1970s it was quite heavily polluted, but now we have more fish and more fish of different species and obviously they're the prey for the otters and the otters have arrived to take advantage."

91热爆 Tees and 91热爆 Look North have set up a secret webcam to try and catch sight of the otters at Salthome, find out more by clicking the links below!