WILTSHIRE MIDWIFE HELPS OTTERS

After a busy week delivering babies in Trowbridge Hospital’s Maternity 
Unit, Senior Midwife Louise Mulholland can sometimes be found lurking around the river banks and sewage plants of Wiltshire, often in the dark. This strange-sounding spare-time activity is all for the sake of the otter, the once-familiar mammal now returning to our rivers after many years’ absence.

For the last three years, Louise has been a volunteer member of the Otter 
Task Force, run by Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s Otters and Rivers Project. This dedicated team of people from all walks of life spend their evenings and weekends looking for signs of otters and water-voles, and building otter holts to encourage existing populations to stay.

“It’s a fantastic way to unwind in the fresh air after a busy week in a 
stressful job,” says Louise, who once tracked otters in a Swindon sewage plant but more commonly works along some of the loveliest stretches of riverbank in Wiltshire. “But perhaps most of all, you use your spare time to really make a difference to the countryside and the welfare of these beautiful creatures.”

Louise, who has delivered more than 370 babies in the course of her 
career, first volunteered in 1997, and has had many close encounters with these fascinating and endangered mammals.

In recent years, rivers in the south-west have seen the welcome return of 
the otter, after a population crash in the 50s and 60s caused by organochloride pesticides and damage to river-banks. While the otter’s return is a good sign of an increasingly healthy river ecosystem, it has not happened without a lot of encouragement.

The Trust’s Otters and Rivers Project Officer, Mark Satinet runs the Task 
Force and paid tribute to the work of the volunteers:

“The kind of enthusiasm and commitment shown by Louise is what has 
enabled the project to achieve the kind of success it has. Currently there are 72 Otter Task Force members, working across the county to benefit otters and rivers. But we need more to help us monitor the return of the otter to all Wiltshire’s rivers.”

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