A New Record of and Additional Notes for the River Otter, Lontra canadensis, from Logan County, Oklahoma

Abstract

River otters, Lontra canadensis, were at one time found across most of Oklahoma. What little is known about the historical distribution in the early 1800s and 1900s in Oklahoma has been summarized by Blair and Hubbell (1938), Duck and Fletcher (1944), Bissonette and Maughan (1978), Hatcher (1984), Caire et al. (1989), Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (2008), Barrett (2008) and Barrett and Leslie (2010). The Oklahoma Game and Fish Department (1952) reported that otters were very rare or had been extirpated in most areas of Oklahoma by 1952 (Caire et al., 1989). Early historical reports are scarce and scattered across the state but include the Red River (Marcy, 1854), Muskogee County (Foreman, 1926), Comanche County (Conover, 1927), Caddo County (Nice, 1931), Woodward County (Blair, 1939) and Kiowa County (Halloran and Glass, 1964).