66 widespread Environmentalist Movements of the 1970s did much to raise ecological awareness and action across the country, and previously lost Midwestern river otters were no exception to this. Prior to the 1970s, River Otters in the state of Illinois were hunted for their fur, almost to the point of extinction, but environmental protection agencies brought them back from endangerment, which in turn improved state rivers, like the Fox Rivers, environmental health overall. Awareness from the Environmental Movement brought large amounts of concern to the river otters, as well as their habitats, and this in turn eventually led the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to enact a recovery plan for the species between 1994 and 1997.5 The introduction of 346 river otters throughout the various waterways in Illinois was successful in its effort to reestablish a stable population of River Otters, as they now thought to have reached around 4,500 in number as of 2005, and this attention can also be attributed to the increased environmental health of state rivers like the Fox River as time moved on.6 Now in a more modern age, river otters have actually been seen adapting to more urban environments, which can be taken as a sign of potential ecological improvement in rivers all across Illinois. In February of 2022, WTTW News published an article about the sudden reappearance of otters in Cook County and wrote about the newly formed Urban River Otter Research Project which is designed to study these newly discovered otters further as to how and why they have adapted to urban styles of living.7 This is a very promising sign for the overall health of the rivers, because as Zach Hahn in the article states: “Otters are notoriously sensitive to polluted water. … In 5Andrew Rutter, “In Search of River Otters,” Lake County Nature, June 25, 2018, https://lakecountynature.com/2017/10/25/in-search-of-river-otters/. 6Robert D Bluett et al., “Status of the River Otter (Lontra Canadensis) in Illinois, 1998–2004,” Illinois State Academy of Science, 2004, http://ilacadofsci.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/097-23MS-2409-print.pdf. 7Patty Wetli, “River Otters Are Back in Chicago. A New Research Project Aims to Find out How They're Adapting,” WTTW News, 2022, https://news.wttw.com/2022/02/22/river-otters-are-back-chicago-new-research-project-aimsfind-out-how-they-re-adapting.
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