Predictive habitat occupancy models for North American river otters along inland streams in New Jersey
Date
2025-01-23
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Wildlife Biology: A journal for wildlife science
Abstract
The North American river otter Lontra canadensis is a semi-aquatic furbearer species that historically ranged throughout North America. Starting in the mid-1800s and continuing through the early 1900s, the negative effects associated with anthropogenic disturbances (i.e. overharvest, development and ultimately habitat alternation) led to local extinctions. Researchers debate whether current land use patterns are affecting river otter occupancy. New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the United States, thus it provides a perfect study area to test potential anthropogenic effects on river otters. Using occupancy modeling to examine river otter habitat preferences, we measured presence/absence at 244 low order streams from January–April 2011–2012 along with 19 corresponding site/landscape covariates in both northern and southern New Jersey. In southern New Jersey, we detected otters at 83/141 sites (58.9%) with a detection probability of 97.7% across repeat visits and a predicted occupancy of 59.4 ± 0.04%. In northern New Jersey we detected otters at 31/103 sites (30.1%) with a detection probability of 44.5% across repeat visits and a predicted occupancy of 58.8 ± 0.04%. We determined the influence of habitat covariates on otter occupancy and found that water depth, water quality, stream width and mink presence were positively correlated with otter occupancy. The % commercial, industrial, transportation and recreational habitat, % low intensity development, bank slope, and distance to lake were negatively correlated with otter occupancy. Knowing the location of occupied stream and latrine sites will assist biologists in their efforts to monitor river otter populations and help estimate river otter density for harvest and conservation efforts.
Description
This article was originally published in Wildlife Biology: A journal for wildlife science. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/wlb3.01367.
© 2025 The Author(s). Wildlife Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Nordic Society Oikos.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords
habitat use, Lontra canadensis, New Jersey, occupancy, river otter, life on land
Citation
Williams, C.K., Bennett, C., Schley, H. and Castelli, P. (2025), Predictive habitat occupancy models for North American river otters along inland streams in New Jersey. Wildlife Biology e01367. https://doi.org/10.1002/wlb3.01367