Otters In The Big City

Making happy headlines for the wildlife lovers of Bangalore, an otter has been discovered in the forests adjoining the city

- Sharath Kumar T

In a surprise discovery, a smooth-coated otter has been captured on camera traps in the forests at Roerich Estate on Kanakapura road. The estate is surrounded by the BM Kaval Reserved Forest, and a large patch of deemed forests of nearly 2,000 acres that connects to Bannerghatta National Park.

The camera traps were set by Sanjay Gubbi and his team of Nature Conservation Foundation in collaboration with the Forest Department to monitor leopard populations in the forests adjoining Bangalore, and to understand their distribution, abundance, human-leopard conflict, and other issues. Previous surveys have recorded a healthy population of leopards both within the reserved and deemed forests on the edge of the city adjoining the NICE highway.