Philip Wayre tends to be pretty matter of fact about honours. “I got an MBE once,” he says. Some people are inclined to be a bit sniffy about such a gong, seeing it more as the sort of reward that’s reserved for long-time lollipop ladies and diligent parish councillors. “Perhaps they deserve it more than me,” Wayre says humbly. “If you’re after grand things you don’t go into conservation.” But something rather grandish did come his way a little while ago: honorary life membership of the Countryside Restoration Trust. It was a mark of recognition for his work with native otters, bringing them back from the brink of extinction, to the point where each county in the country can once again claim its quota of the animals.

In his citation the CRT chairman, Robin Page, elevates Philip Wayre to nothing less than hero status: “Without his dedication, linked to captive breeding, when otters were at their most vulnerable, and re-introduction once habitat had improved, the otter would still be restricted to a few remote corners of Britain.  ‘If somebody doesn’t do something very soon there won’t be any otters left’. Well, if otters were disappearing and continuing to disappear, something had got to be done. So I suppose we felt that breeding them in captivity was an obvious answer, and then releasing them. And it worked.”

It worked rather too well for some people. An otter will eat the equivalent of about a fifth of its body weight each day, and most of its preferred diet will consist of fish, much to the consternation of anglers. Before the trust began its work fish stocks in rivers, ponds and lakes were going largely unmolested. These days, people that fish for fun, alarmed at the depredations of creatures that fish to live, are muttering with increasing frequency about control and culling. The picture was completely the opposite when Wayre began his work. What he had observed was the steady decline of otters owing to what he calls “the usual things: commercial farming, straightening of rivers, destruction of habitat.” One aspect of commercial farming seemed to be particularly devastating: chemicals that were spread on fields were seeping into the soil, leaching into waterways. “It is said that the fish were poisoned first,” he says, “and then the otters ate poisoned fish.”

The trust’s breeding programme was partly financed by opening the grounds to the public. There was great family entertainment to be had from the boisterous water play of the otters, underpinned by their anthropomorphic appeal, arising from Henry Williamson’s 1927 novel Tarka the Otter. It succeeded, with 30,000 paying visitors each year.

To find out more about Philip Wayre’s story, read the article in the February issue of Suffolk Norfolk Life available to buy online and in stores.