Watch the moment wild otters are spotted on camera at Ewhurst Park near Newbury

A pair of otters have been spotted at a country estate in the first confirmed sighting on its grounds for at least 70 years.

Delightful video footage shows a mother otter and baby playing, swimming, scent marking and using bark from a fallen tree to groom their fur

The footage was captured on cameras set up by rangers at Ewhurst Park, a 925-acre estate south of Tadley.

Ewhurst has been the home of a biodiversity and sustainability project since it was bought by Malaysian-born environmentalist, entrepreneur and former model Mandy Lieu in 2020.

Ms Lieu said: “It’s been amazing to watch as nature has started to take front and centre stage across the park.

“Otters prefer clean freshwater so our newest residents are a sign that water quality is improving; testament to our nature restoration efforts here at Ewhurst Park.”

Otters are the latest in a series of nature recovery milestones for the park, which welcomed the first beavers in Hampshire for 400 years in 2023, and the birth of baby beavers the following year.

The site also recorded a total of 90 different bird species in 2024, including many listed as of red concern nationally, as well as many small mammals, amphibians, butterflies and reptiles.

According to Ewhurst, UK otter populations declined to near extinction in the 1950s and 60s because of the introduction of harmful industrial chemicals called PCBs, and organochlorine pesticides.

These chemicals got into the environment and moved up the food chain causing death and reproductive failure in the UK’s top predators, including otters.

Since the 1970s, otters have been given space to recover following a ban on the harmful chemicals and new legislation giving them legal protection.

Their numbers in Hampshire have been steadily increasing from only seven per cent of sites surveyed occupied by otters in 1977 compared to 37 per cent in 2009, the last time a National Otter Survey was completed.

But there have been no confirmed sightings of otters at Ewhurst Park since at least the 1950s, until now.

Ewhurst’s head of ecology management Fiona Kenny said: “Our ambition here at Ewhurst Park is to restore ecological processes and systems within the landscape so that it can function properly and provide for its inhabitants with minimal management.

“The level of nature recovery we saw in 2024 has been incredible which really confirms that we’re on the right track.”