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Cats vs. Otters on a Remote Chesapeake Bay Island

River otters, which are native to the Chesapeake Bay region, love to plunder the tanks of water that hold soft crabs for watermen.

So crabbers like James “Ooker” Eskridge on Tangier Island have fought back by importing cats to guard their tanks.

But these these cats have spawned new problems.

The cats imported onto Tangier Island multiplied so rapidly Eskridge, the mayor of the small fishing community, and others had to bring in a team of veterinarians to spay the cats.  That might have made the otters happy, but perhaps not the crabs, because they lost their arm of watch cats.

Tom Pelton, a national award-winning environmental journalist, has hosted "The Environment in Focus" since 2007. He also works as director of communications for the Environmental Integrity Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to holding polluters and governments accountable to protect public health. From 1997 until 2008, he was a journalist for The Baltimore Sun, where he was twice named one of the best environmental reporters in America by the Society of Environmental Journalists.