That is to say, those who want too many fish are those who give the otter
his opportunity.
In a great river like the Thames a few otters cannot do much or lasting
injury except in particular places. The truth is, that the otter is an
ornament to the river, and more worthy of preservation than any other
creature. He is the last and largest of the wild creatures who once
roamed so freely in the forests which enclosed Londinium, that fort in
the woods and marshes--marshes which to this day, though drained and
built over, enwrap the nineteenth-century city in thick mists. The red
deer are gone, the boar is gone, the wolf necessarily destroyed--the red
deer can never again drink at the Thames in the dusk of the evening while
our civilisation endures. The otter alone remains--the wildest, the most
thoroughly self-supporting of all living things left--a living link going
back to the days of Cassivelaunus. London ought to take the greatest
interest in the otters of its river. The shameless way in which every
otter that dares to show itself is shot, trapped, beaten to death, and
literally battered out of existence, should rouse the indignation of
every sportsman and every lover of nature.
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