Etude de la repartition de la loutre d' Europe (Lutra lutra L.) en France. Actualisation 1993.
1996
Rosoux R. | Tournebize T. | Maurin H. | Bouchardy C.
Up to the beginning of the 20th century, the otter (Lutra lutra) was present in every region of France except Corsica. The decline began to be clear in the 1930s in the north, the east and the south-east. After 1950, populations became progressively sparse and the otter disappeared from 60 out of 95 French departments. The results of the first sets of national surveys were presented at the beginning of the 80s; they showed that the otter was still present in a dozen departments around the Atlantic coast and Limousin. Since then, a few study groups worked on more refined surveys so that, ten years on, we have a better picture of the otter's distibution in France. They confirmed that populations are thriving in the west, from Brittany to the Landes but that the populations of the Cote d'Armor, Finistere and Loire-Atlantique are not as dense as it was previously thought. In the Pyrenees, the otter's presence is more sporadic than anticipated. In '84, normal otter populations were found in only two departments of the Massif central : the Correze and the Creuze. Since then, a recolonization process took place in many directions and is still going on to the west in Haute Vienne, to the north in Allier, to the east in Cantal and Puy de Dome. Furthermore, cores of very isolated populations are developing in Lozere, in Ardeche and in Haute-Loire, particularly in the rivers Allier and Loire. There is no doubt that legal protection the otter has enjoyed in the past 20 years played an important part in this recolonization movement. But the question remains: why and how has this population increase been made possible in the Massif central while the decline was still under way in the other regions of the whole of Europe.
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