The last appointment of “Meetings at the museum to talk about fauna“, scheduled for next May 8th, at 8.45pm at MUSE – Trento Science Museum (free entry while places last), is dedicated to the return of the otter to the Italian Alpine mountains, a phenomenon well documented thanks to the national monitoring promoted and financed by WWF Italy.
At MUSE, Luca Lapini, zoologist of the Friulian Museum of Natural History, will provide a preview of the first overview of the “lady of the rivers”, one of the rarest mammals in Italy.
From around a hundred animals perched in a few rivers in central-southern Italy in forty years, the situation of the otter in Italy has clearly improved: today there are 800-1,000 specimens, in a clear phase of expansion both from southern Italy (with the recent recolonization of Abruzzo, Lazio, Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna), both from the north (Liguria, Lombardy, Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia).
During the evening, Luca Lapini, one of the leading Italian experts on this animal, will provide an updated picture of the situation of the species in the Alpine territory.
The meeting will be moderated by Paolo Pedrini, coordinator of the Conservation Biology Sector – MUSE Research and Collections Office.
“In the 20th century the otter risked becoming extinct in much of Italy. Obji – Lapini anticipates – the data are comforting: this species is rapidly catching up both in central-southern Italy and in northern Italy, where it is independently returning from Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland and France. The theme of the meeting promoted by MUSE, entitled ‘The lady of the rivers: the silent return of the otter to the Alps’, is focused precisely on the return of this species to the Alps”.
The national monitoring, the data of which will be presented on May 31st on the occasion of “World Otter Day”. Numerous volunteers, students and associations took part in the study, following the standardized OSG methodology (Otter Specialist Group), which allows relatively precise comparisons between different research areas.
During the investigations, both the search for markings along the rivers and the use of the camera-trapping and also the search for finds from road mortality.
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