Survival and Post-release Movements of River Otters Translocated to Western New York

Early post-release movement of reintroduced lions (Panthera leo) in Dinokeng Game Reserve, Gauteng, South Africa

“…The process resembles natural dispersal as the animals have to balance the trade-off between exploration and exploitation in both situations, but forced dispersal implies bigger challenges and risks for reintroduced animals because they are forced to learn as efficiently and as quickly as possible, the landscape, environmental conditions and resource distributions that are completely new to them (Berger-Tal and Saltz 2014). Due to the lack of knowledge in landscape features, predators and competitors, mortality risk during exploration is even higher than in natural dispersals (Spinola et al 2008), particularly for territorial species like lions (Panthera leo) which defend against intruders aggressively. In addition, homing behaviour is a common occurrence in reintroductions, when animals tend to travel towards the direction of their capture sites upon release (Rogers 1988).…”

Spatio-Temporal Variations in Age Structures of a Partially Re-established Population of Northern River Otters (Lontra canadensis)

“…Melquist and Hornocker (1983) and Erickson and McCullough (1987) noted overlapping home ranges between both sexes. Others have found that male home-range size is not greater than female home-range size (Johnson and Berkley, 1999) until the breeding season (Spinola, 2003). Occasionally, female home ranges are larger than male home ranges (Griess, 1987).…”

“…Female river otter dispersal distances were greater than male dispersal distances in New York (Spinola, 2003) but similar in Oklahoma (Base, 1986) and less than males during breeding season in Alaska (Blundell et al, 2002). Blundell et al (2002) investigated dispersal properties of river otter in PWS and concluded that natal dispersal remained low for both sexes, but some male river otters exhibited breeding dispersal.…”

Factors Influencing Mortality Associated with the Translocation of Northern River Otters (Lontra canadensis) in Utah

“…Though some otter reintroduction projects have no mortality associated with translocation events (Hernandez-Divers et al 2001, Pitt et al 2003, Spinola et al 2008, this is not the case for the majority of reintroduction projects. In Oklahoma, 7 of 20 otters died either shortly after release or during holding (Hoover et al 1985).…”