An Otter Just Returned to New York City’s Bronx River for the First Time in a Century. Now, You Can Help Name It
A trail camera photographed the animal earlier this summer, offering a hopeful sign that the once-polluted urban waterway is recovering after decades of restoration work
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This summer, a North American river otter made history by becoming the first member of its species to be spotted along New York City’s Bronx River in 100 years. Now, conservationists want to give the pioneering creature a name—and they’re asking the public for help.
The Bronx River Alliance and Bronx Zoo have proposed three names for the animal: Nessie, Ruthie and Morgan. The selections are a nod to community changemakers who have made a positive impact on the river and the Bronx more broadly: Nessie Panton, who has been an advocate since the 1970s; Ruth Anderberg, the “Founding Mother” of Bronx River Restoration, the predecessor to the Bronx River Alliance; and Morgan Powell, an activist and historian.
Members of the public are invited to vote for their favorite name by commenting on Instagram. Voting closes on September 29 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time, and the winner will be announced October 1.
The river otter was photographed on the night of June 23 by a trail camera that had been set up by R.J. Hawkins, an independent wildlife biologist who works with the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which runs the Bronx Zoo.
In 2024, while working toward a master’s degree in biology, Hawkins installed three lockbox-protected wildlife cameras on trees along the waterway as part of monitoring efforts on the zoo’s grounds. Since then, he has returned every few weeks to check the batteries and switch out the memory cards, whose photos usually show common birds like Canada geese, mallards and wood ducks.
But one day this past summer, an image stopped him in his tracks. Hawkins almost couldn’t believe his eyes—he thought he might be looking at a river otter, but he wasn’t totally sure.
“It is just the backside of the river otter, so I didn’t want to become the boy who cried river otter,” Hawkins tells WABC-TV’s Kemberly Richardson.
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He decided to run the image by experts at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and WCS. They agreed—his camera had indeed captured a North American river otter, the first sighting of the species along the Bronx River since the early 1900s.
The black-and-white photo shows a grayish creature with a tail, but its head is obscured by a leafy bush—so scientists haven’t been able to glean much about the individual.
“The sex can be determined, but it’s tricky since we only have that one photo,” Hawkins tells the New York Times’ James Barron.
Still, the image is a big deal, because it suggests the Bronx River ecosystem may finally be recovering after decades of pollution. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, it served as a dumping ground for industrial waste like fertilizer, oil and chemicals, as well as unwanted items.
In the 1980s, “you would see cars in the river, tons of tires in the river,” Javier Lopez, interim executive director of the Bronx River Alliance, tells Gothamist’s Walter Wuthmann.
But for the last 50 years or so, conservationists have been working diligently to clean up the waterway—and now, it seems, the river is responding. River otters are “an indicator of freshwater ecosystem health,” Hawkins tells NPR’s Scott Simon. “They can’t tolerate high levels of pollution because the prey species that they eat, like fish—pollution can accumulate in those prey.”
The recent sighting “really shows that all those [restoration] efforts over the years have all paid off,” he adds.
Did you know? Aquatic adaptations
River otters have a “third eyelid” called a nictitating membrane that allows them to see while they’re underwater. Their ears and nostrils also close to keep water out.
The river otter isn’t the only species that appears to be making a comeback on the Bronx River. In 2007, a beaver returned to the river for the first time in more than 200 years. The creature, nicknamed José after then-U.S. Representative José E. Serrano of the Bronx, was joined a few years later by another dubbed Justin Beaver. But the pair vanished around 2018.
Beavers weren’t seen again on the river until May 2025, when one of Hawkins’ camera traps captured one. And this summer, one of his cameras photographed an American mink—another freshwater ecosystem indicator species.
“What we were able to do and what the community was able to do is to give a little bit of respite to nature,” John Calvelli, executive vice president of public affairs for WCS, tells Gothamist. “And guess what? Nature is incredibly resilient. If we give it some time, it will come back.”
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