{"id":1017664,"date":"2026-08-22T19:47:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T19:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1017664\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T19:47:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T19:47:14","slug":"dems-credit-mamdani-with-otters-return-to-nyc-but-experts-cry-foul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1017664\/","title":{"rendered":"Dems credit Mamdani with otter&#8217;s return to NYC, but experts cry foul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Otterly absurd!\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Dems have fallen so deep under Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s spell that they\u2019re crediting him with the return of an otter to the Bronx River for the first time in about 100 years \u2014 despite the decades of work locals have put into restoring the waterway.<\/p>\n<p>A North American river otter was spotted frolicking in the brush beside the Bronx River in June, the first time the animal has been seen in the borough in roughly a century, according to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/07\/23\/us-news\/super-rare-sea-turtle-returns-to-nyc-waters-after-injury-in-shell-yeah-moment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Wildlife Conservation Society Bronx Zoo<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Left fans are crediting Mamdani with bringing the otter back.  Erik Pendzich\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n<p>Mamdani\u2019s legion of online fanboys quickly rushed to credit the socialist mayor for the small marine animal\u2019s return to New York City.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnder Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an otter has been spotted in the Bronx River for the first time in 100 years,\u201d Democrats Deliver \u2014 a pro-Democratic social media group \u2014 posted on X.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNYC is healing,\u201d lefty Gen Z influencer Harry Sisson wrote while sharing their post.<\/p>\n<p>Numerous other accounts weaseled their way in and posted news of the otter\u2019s return juxtaposed with a grinning Mamdani.<\/p>\n<p>But the Bronx River Alliance quickly threw cold freshwater on the love fest, telling The Post that the otter\u2019s return was due to a decades-long effort, not the social media star mayor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe communities along the Bronx River have been fighting for over 50 years to bring the river back to life after decades of pollution and neglect,\u201d Bronx River Association Outreach Manager Victoria Toro said.<\/p>\n<p>A river otter was spotted in The Bronx for the first time in 100 years.  Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>She said that volunteers from the Bronx spent years physically removing piles of trash and debris that actively harmed wildlife from the river.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople didn\u2019t even know there was a river there because it was piled so high with trash,\u201d she said, referring to the sorry state of the Bronx River for decades.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the Bronx River was dammed up for years, Toro explained, as factories located along its banks flooded it with industrial waste \u2014 driving away marine life.<\/p>\n<p>Experts say crediting Mamdani for the otter is ridiculous.  Democrats Deliver\/X<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the 25th anniversary of the Bronx River Alliance and we\u2019re proud it coincides with the first spotting of an otter in 100 years,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>River otters were once as common in New York City as squirrels or rats, but habitat destruction drove them out of the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Otterly absurd!\u00a0 Dems have fallen so deep under Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s spell that they\u2019re crediting him with the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1017665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,5248,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,5305,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969,5301],"class_list":["post-1017664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-news","tag-usa","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1017664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1017665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1017664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1017664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1017664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}