A DORSET wildlife worker who has been working on a special otter team for three years has seen her first wild otter - while on a mission to save endangered creatures in Chile.

Bronwen Bruce, 30, from Wyke Road in Weymouth, has been working on the Otters and Rivers Project team at the Dorset Wildlife Trust for three years.

But it was only after she won a £1,000 Youth Millennium Award from the National Lottery to go on a trip to Chile, tracking southern river otters, that she got her first glimpse of the creatures.

She said: "It was magical. I was in an area north of Santiago, between Temeco and Valdivia, radio tracking the otters, and I was lying down on this wooden bridge, looking through the slats when Linde, a female otter, just swam underneath.

"The name Linde means beautiful - and she was as well.

"She climbed out of the river and sat, peeking through the bushes at us and hissing

"Then we saw a male called Ray, which means king of the forest. He was with a female and much more laid back about us watching him - it was so exciting!

"The radio tracking operation is aiming to find out which habitats in the river are important to otters, so they can at least be protected, because there is a real danger that they will die out."

The southern river otter is facing extinction if the destruction of its habitats is allowed to go on. Already, one third of the population has been wiped out by the burning of native forests and the planting of conifers in their place.

Despite being very similar in looks to our English otters the southern river breed is only found in Chile and in two places in Argentina and the destruction of the southern forests has meant that their traditional food, the crayfish, is dying out.