Sea Otters Facing Uncertain Future at Island Colony

In a major break with a plan to create a spinoff colony of threatened California sea otters, federal wildlife officials have stopped moving animals to San Nicolas Island, and may capture and remove those already there.

Only 14 adults remain of the 139 otters that were moved to the island 60 miles off the Ventura County coast, according to a report on the four-year program issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this month.

“The translocated colony is precariously small, and its future prospects are uncertain,” the report said.

Federal biologists wanted to establish a colony at the island to preserve the species if a massive oil spill wiped out the main group of 2,000 otters that roam the Central California coast.

The federal wildlife agency decided to halt the transfers after many of the otters left San Nicolas Island and two animals, which were implanted with radios, died.

State fishery officials have complained for the past year that the project has failed. Central Coast fishermen have protested since the transfers began in 1987 that valuable abalone, sea urchin and other fisheries in the Channel Islands are being lost to the voracious otters.

Abandoning the controversial program will not change the protected status of the threatened species.

“You have wildlife competing for the same resource as people,” said Marvin L. Plenert, western regional director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “The alternative, if we don’t protect them, is extinction. And I don’t think anybody wants that.”

Plenert said he will rule by the first of the year whether to abandon the program and remove all otters from the island. He will base his decision in large part on recommendations by the Sea Otter Recovery Team, a group of scientists affiliated with universities and private institutes nationwide who advise the Fish and Wildlife Service on how to ensure the survival of the California sea otter.

If Plenert declares the program a failure, he is obligated under federal law and the terms of an agreement with the state Department of Fish and Game to have the otters removed from San Nicolas Island.