In the dreamy old city center of Lincoln, where Tudor and Victorian buildings stand bedecked in Christmas gaiety, CCTV footage revealed a wild sight one evening in November.

A red fox and a river otter were galivanting through the town—as near to a scene in a children’s books or a Disney film as could be imagined.

No one knows, writes Patrick Greenfield for, how many river otters exist in England, but the unlikely security camera footage reveals that unlike 20 years ago, these charming riverine mammals are no longer rare.

The Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust described their rapid return to the waterways of Britain as “remarkable.”

“Twenty years ago, they were almost nonexistent,” said the Trust’s head of nature recovery, Janice Bradley. “Then we saw them coming up the River Trent from other areas. Now, we’ve got records of otters in virtually every river and watercourse in the county. It’s remarkable.”

100 years on from the collapse of animal populations across the Industrialized world, the stories of decline often repeat themselves. For the river otter, it was two of the most familiar—the pollution of rivers from industrial dumping, and overhunting for their furs.

But with both practices largely gone, and thanks to a targeted reintroduction campaign in the eastern areas of Britain, there may be as many as 11,000 river otters in the country.

Scientists admit that’s speculation, but it’s difficult to monitor their numbers reliably.

While outright dumping is much less common than it was in the first-half of the 20th century, the otters face other risks of water contamination. PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals, and microplastics accumulate in the water, which accumulate in fish, and therefore accumulate in the otters.