Today, on World Otter Day 2026, the Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN) is proud to announce the release of our first Sea Otter Fund (SOF) impact report. This is a significant moment for us—not only is the SOF our first marine Wildlife Fund, but it is also our first dedicated to the recovery of an endangered species in North America. Learn more about sea otters and our work to save them below.
Bringing Back our Ecosystem Engineers
Sea otters are joy made visible—floating on their backs, using rocks as tools to crack open urchins, gathering in tight-knit rafts that bob on the waves. For too long, that joy has been absent from many of the shores that sea otters used to call home. Once abundant from Baja California across the Pacific to Japan, sea otters were hunted to near extinction for their fur, dwindling to only 2,000 survivors at the turn of the 20th century. Their absence has had dire consequences.
As ecosystem engineers, sea otters protect kelp forests by eating the sea urchins and other invertebrates that graze on them. Without otters, those forests, which act as nurseries for many of the fish that coastal communities depend on, have been decimated. Today, coastal communities are living with the long-term consequences of an ecosystem out of balance—from increased coastal erosion, to less productive fisheries. It is those very communities that have ignited a spark to bring back our sea otters, and WCN’s Sea Otter Fund (SOF) is helping sustain and increase that momentum through the projects we support.
A Rare Opportunity
Our approach is founded on the knowledge that sea otter reintroduction—the translocation of animals from surviving populations back to areas where they have gone locally extinct—has worked in the past. One- third of all sea otters alive today are the result of successful reintroductions. Reintroducing sea otters is about far more than simply moving otters: it’s a multi-stage, multi-year process involving aligning partners, planning logistics, implementing reintroduction and managing people and otter populations. This World Otter Day, we are closer than ever to our goal of bringing otters home.
This report focuses on the rare opportunity of this moment, when community-driven momentum, strong science primed partnerships converge. WCN’s SOF is catalyzing further momentum by supporting partners along the sea otter’s historical range to reverse the course of 120 years of local extinction. With grants supporting management and planning, research, ecosystem restoration, economic and cultural development, and community engagement, the SOF is putting hope into motion.
Read the Report
Read the full Sea Otter Fund annual report here. And from all of us at WCN, happy World Otter Day!