PROTECTION OF OTTERS (Hansard, 13 May 1969)

§ Mr. Edwin Brooks (Bebington)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the protection of otters. My proposed Bill, which is very short and simple, would prohibit the hunting and killing of otters otherwise than under licences issued in circumstances where it appears that they are damaging fisheries, crops, or river banks. The object of the Bill is simply to conserve a wild creature of our countryside.

The House may recall that 1970 is to be European Conservation Year, and it is, therefore, timely to remind ourselves that our natural environment is under deadly assault. Everywhere wild life is in retreat, declining and dying from concrete, pollution, pesticides and sheer thoughtlessness. Unique and delightful species face extinction. A living heritage could all too swiftly become a dead fossil record.

Fortunately, and at the eleventh hour, the danger seems to have been recognised. Only yesterday details of the 300 birds and mammals in greatest danger throughout the world were published and the alarm has also been sounded by the World Wildlife Fund. During recent months the House has been urged to set up a national wildlife control authority in Britain.

My Bill to save otters would be a much more limited measure. Yet it could be a useful and possibly significant step towards the wider objective. Indeed, if, by our indifference, we permit this delightful and intelligent animal to vanish from our rivers, I would despair of our ever holding the line against the depredations of sheer selfishness and stupidity.

My interest in the otter was aroused long ago, when I won my first and, as it proved to be, my last school prize, the book "Tarka the Otter". Williamson's classic gave me a lasting affection for the animal which Gavin Maxwell's more recent "Ring of Bright Water" has confirmed. It is hard not to see our better human qualities in the otter's great sense of play, and in the exemplary maternal instincts of the female.

1224 Jeremy Harris, who has recently published the outstanding definitive account of the otter family, describes how he was once woken in the middle of the night by a terrific banging and thumping from the inside of one of my otter's sheds. On investigation, he proved to have taken to bed with him a large wooden ball from his pool and to be now engaged in a midnight game of 'fives'. Yet this engaging and playful animal has been persecuted for at least eight centuries in Britain. It was regarded as a pest, a vandal of the river. Against such a background of ignorance about the creature's ecological rôle, it was understandable that it became an outlaw of the riverbank fit only to be hunted for pleasure, and killed in the sacred cause of fishing rights. Today, with greater scientific knowledge, there can be no excuse for such persecution.

Harris affirms that otters will not as a rule kill merely for the sake of killing. Gavin Maxwell points out that their principal food consists of species in direct competition with game fish, and it is known that otters eat a lot of eels, which, in turn, eat a lot of salmon and trout eggs. The "rogue" otter can be a menace to a trout hatchery, but such a deviant is unusual and presents only an infrequent necessity for the animal's capture or death. Overwhelmingly, the weight of evidence is on the side of the otter.

In a debate in another place on 13th March, successive noble Lords with great practical experience testified in its defence. Furthermore, I have just received a letter from Mr. Peter Scott, a most distinguished naturalist, who says that the argument that the otters are dangerous vermin which do great damage to salmon and trout rivers is almost wholly spurious. Now, even if the otter were a pest, to hunt it remorselessly for hour after hour would be a deplorable and savage sport. But when it is known to have a beneficial effect upon the balance of nature, the hunters themselves stand revealed as the pests who need to be chased away. Moreover, to continue killing the otter when its numbers show a steep decline, and then to suggest importing more otters to keep up the good work of hunting and killing them, is to insult the name of homo sapiens.

1225 I accept that the slaughter of the otter is not just by the hunt. Its pelt is also a source of danger for it. On 5th March, I was informed by the Minister of State, Board of Trade, that between 2,000 and 5,000 otter skins are imported into Britain annually. My hon. Friend went on to say that British-produced skins are negligible in quantity."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th March, 1969; Vol. 779, c. 120–1.] In relative terms this may be so, although the evidence is tantalisingly sparse. Nevertheless, there are firms whose names I possess which purchase and advertise extensively for otter pelts in this country. I am informed on good authority that £8 per pelt has been paid within the last year or two.

My Bill would make the killing of an otter, whether for pleasure or for pelt, an offence. Any firm which advertises for British pelts, or accepts them, would be liable to prosecution. In this way I hope that the animal will be enabled to survive extensively in Britain, protected from the only carnivorous animal—man—which threatens it.

But the decline in the otter numbers, which seems an undoubted feature of the past decade, is also due to other factors less easily overcome, such as severe winters and pollution. Since these threats will largely persist, it is all the more essential and urgent that the direct killing by man of the otter should be stopped. Indeed, otter-hunting, by destroying between 50 and 100 otters a year, may well be playing the decisive marginal rôle in wiping out the species for ever.

The evidence for the otter's decline is most strikingly illustrated in the statistics of otters killed in hunts. Up to the late 'fifties, the annual take was over 200. In each successive year the number killed has fallen. By 1967 the number being killed was barely a quarter of that in the late 'fifties. Moreover, there had been a steep rise in the number of hunting days taken to kill one otter.

Whether hunting is the major factor in this decline may be questioned. What cannot be denied in simple logic, is that the catastrophic decline in numbers suggested by these figures, is still further worsened by each otter hunted to death. And if a bitch dies, so do her pups. When a species is approaching the point of no return, it cannot afford to lose a single 1226 member unnecessarily. We cannot afford to wait for the more elaborate five-year survey proposed by the Mammal Society; nor should he be content with the very limited and largely specious curtailment of hunting voluntarily decreed by the hunters.

The future of the otter is not the business of those who kill it most cruelly; it is the business of those of us who respect wildlife as a trust we hold for the future. The issue is a simple one of conservation buttressed by compassion. As Gavin Maxwell states: This is as far as I know the only blood sport in which the entire 'field' of humans, besides a pack of hounds, is deployed in the destruction of one animal, and to triumph in that animal's needless death is to my mind degrading. Sportsmen who force the otter on remorselessly with steel-tipped staves, or even dig the terrified animal out of the holt where it has sought refuge, have a queer idea of fun.

My Bill would stop these mediaeval antics. Needless to say, I am supported by both the R.S.P.C.A. and by the League Against Cruel Sports. I am also supported by at least 185 local authorities, whose views were sought in recent weeks, and by many naturalists and conservationists who have written to me in often forceful and pungent terms. Hon. Members will themselves have received the valuable background paper from "Wildlife", which elaborated the conservation arguments.

This, then, is what my Bill is all about. It is a belated rescue operation for a threatened species.

May I conclude by again quoting the words of Jeremy Harris: It must be remembered that we cannot look to zoos to make good the follies of our depredations; there is not a single pair of European otters in any British zoo, nor in private ownership in this country. And he asks this question: The fact that otters are found almost everywhere in the world may well indicate that they occupy an important ecological niche. Is it wise to risk hounding this animal out of existence? I believe that there can be only one answer to this question, and I therefore commend my Bill to the House.