the field in the wild. national otter surveys started in wales in the 19705 and then pesticide pollution was blamed for nearly wiping them out. after the chemicals were banned, the otters had been bouncing back, that is until now. unfortunately for the first time we ve seen a decline in otter signs across wales so the last national survey in 2010 had a height of 90% of the server side had signs for otters which was really positive but unfortunately this latest survey has shown we ve declined to 70% of those sites so we had quite a drop. the otters returned to riversides just one right across the uk in recent decades, and it s been seen as a huge and let s face it pretty rare nature conservation success story. and that s why the experts are so worried by the findings of this survey. it is a bit of a warning to us that something might be going wrong. it could be habitat, food, pollutants, the general