SKYE is to welcome a delegation of Japanese conservationists desperate to see otters in the wild for the first time and save their cultural folklore.

Otters were declared extinct in Japan by its ministry of the environment in August 2012 but they play an important role in Japanese culture.

Folk stories describe otters as creatures which can shape-shift into humans, including beautiful women and monks, who fool people and sometimes kill them.

The International Otter Survival Fund (IOSF), based on Skye, has been working with Japan’s conservation expert Dr Takahiro Murakami and his team on a project to reintroduce the creatures to Japan.

Dr Murakami, who has never seen otters in the wild before, will arrive as part of a three-strong delegation next weekend.

Grace Yoxon, IOSF director, said the team want to observe the signs of otters and hopefully see otters in their natural habitat.

She said: “Otters are a really important part of Japan’s culture. There are a lot of folk stories about otters so they want to re-introduce them before people lose familiarity with them.

“Dr Murakami invited us over to Japan last October for a workshop to talk about how to reintroduce them and the relationship has built from there.

“Now they are coming here for three days and hopefully be able to see otters living in the wild for the first time.

“We have around 350 otters on Skye so hopefully they won’t all be hiding.”

The Japanese otter was either a subspecies of the Eurasian otter or possibly a separate species. As they no longer exist, it is hoped otters from the neighbouring Russian island of Sakhalin will be introduced to the Hokkaido island in north Japan.

Yoxon added: “We visited the Shiretoko National Park and the surroundings were very similar to Scotland, there were just no otters.”