Chamber Lunch - North Coast Otters

Our Guest Speaker will be Professor Jeff Black from HSU. North Coast Otters is an ambitious collaboration of art and science, encouraging imagination and observation from our region’s rich creative community. This public arts initiative provides an accessible opportunity to explore our connection with nature through engagement with this charismatic critter.

The project will commission 100 unique pieces of Otter Art to be displayed at shops, galleries, schools, and other North Coast locations. Participating artists will decorate three-foot-tall otter sculptures for a summer 2020 educational art trail throughout Humboldt, Del Norte, and neighboring counties. A Junior Otter Ranger program will be crafted to inspire the young and young at heart. The Otter Art will then be auctioned to raise funds to support our region’s grassroots watershed projects and HSU student internship opportunities.

The initiative arose from a desire to share what we are learning about wild river otters with the community. Since 1999, HSU students have been collecting otter records from citizen volunteers as a means of tracking the quality of North Coast habitats. River otters, seen at all times of day in our area, have captured the attention of thousands.