AN otter has been found dead at a fly tip near Siddington.

The three-foot-long otter was found at 10am by a passer-by in a ditch next to a fly tip in Clark’s Lane, Siddington.

Although becoming more common, Otters are still very rare and seeing them in the wild is unusual.

There is no indication of how the otter came to be there or what killed it, though its body was intact.

The body will now be removed by the Environment Agency and sent to Cardiff where it will receive a post-mortem to find the cause of death.  

Gareth Parry, otter expert and head of community programmes at the Wildlife Trust, said: “Although there’s a chance it was left there by a human, 41 per cent of Otter’s non-natural deaths are caused by road traffic accidents.

“Otters can travel quite a distance across land and there does not have to be water nearby so it could have travelled from quite far away.

“Otters actually only need water to wash and drink. In some places in Europe they live in marshes without any flowing water.”