65 winter.”1 The playful and social, yet wild and instinctual natures they possess have drawn many to them; some for research and pure fascination, but some, for profit. The otter population in the Illinois state area was rapidly decreasing at the beginning of the 20th century, almost to the point of extinction, but efforts from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources helped revitalize their populations, and this can therefore be taken as a sign that people have begun to care more about rivers in Illinois, such as the Fox River. Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, events such as the Green Bay Fur Trade and many others like it had depleted the Midwest of many of its local animals, some of the most targeted being otters, for being relatively easy to spot/hunt compared to other animals.2 Along with the degradation of habitats, water pollution, and unregulated trapping in the 1900s, river otters were quickly considered an endangered species throughout the Midwest area.3 The reckless actions of these trappers, along with the growing demand for harvested fur also caused problems for the overall health of the rivers, which includes the Fox River. As the Chicago Tribune states: “The Fox River is in much better shape than 50 years ago when "the Fox" — an anonymous environmental activist — would plug sewer outlets going into the river and call out companies throwing pollutants into it.”4 A large-scale cause-and-effect chain followed shortly: because of the growing demand for otter fur, the companies that processed the fur would dump their waste products into the Fox River carelessly, which in turn with the excessive hunting and pollution, affected the populations of otters along the Fox River, and caused their numbers to drop dramatically enough to classify the species as endangered. However, the 1 Charles B Cory, “The Mammals of Illinois and Wisconsin,” Google Books (Google, 1912), https://books.google.com/books?id=KcdOAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA333#v=onepage&q=otter&f=false, 333. 2 Jeanne Kay, “Native Americans in the Fur - JSTOR,” JSTOR, 1985, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3984337.pdf. 3Andrew Rutter, “In Search of River Otters,” Lake County Nature, June 25, 2018, https://lakecountynature.com/2017/10/25/in-search-of-river-otters/. 4 Gloria Casas, “Removing Dams on the Fox River Will Increase Number of Fish Species,” Chicago Tribune, May 10, 2019, https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/elgin-courier-news/ct-ecn-fox-river-st-0302-20150228-7-story.html.
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