THE aptly named Anna Craven has come back home after seeing a lot of the world, even by modern travel standards, but there is something that she has never seen in Upper Wharfedale.

Curiously, her mother never saw it either and died at a ripe old age with that particular ambition unfulfilled.

Anna is determined she achieves her late mother's dream - to see an otter fishing in the beck that runs behind her gorgeous cottage in Kettlewell.

"I suppose I have seen more of the world than a lot of people," says Anna, 61, a Cambridge trained anthropologist and archaeologist. "But this longing to see otters in the Upper Wharfe is something of a family tradition.

"My mother longed to see one too - but never did. Perhaps the work we are doing now will bring them back - and fairly quickly too."

Otters have a funny effect of people. Up until the 1950s, they were hunted, shot and trapped to the point of extinction for their alleged predation on trout and salmon.

This was not only cruel but daft as well because the otter's favourite food is eels, and they are deadly enemies of game fish because they eat their spawned eggs in their millions.

And, although an otter will indeed take a trout, there haven't been any salmon in the Wharfe since the 19th century, where their access to and from the sea via the Humber was poisoned by the Industrial Revolution.

In the 1960s, this stupidity was exposed by the Scottish writer Gavin Maxwell in a seminal book called "A ring of bright water", one of the most surprising publishing successes of all time because it sold millions worldwide and was made into a film.

By the time the British public had woken up to the fact that the otter was a truly wonderful animal, they had all but gone, murdered by man or driven to the extremes of the UK in Scotland, Wales, and a few isolated spots in the Lake District and West Country.

This is why Anna Craven's mother never saw one in her entire lifetime, even though she spent years walking the valley and many hours watching Cam Gill Beck, which rushes past the back of Rose Cottage chuckling and whistling on its way into the Wharfe. It is a situation which daughter Anna wants to put right. And as a lady with her experience, she might be just the one to do it.

The Craven family - they suspect the name is linked with the district but have no proof - were dyers in Bradford who spent their weekends and holidays walking in the Dales. They bought Rose Cottage in the 1950s and Anna spent much of her childhood there.

She was sent off to the rather posh Bedales public school and then went onto Cambridge. With her degree, she then set out on a career which literally spanned the world.

She studied ancient societies in Africa, went off to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific - where she married a local trade union leader turned politician - entertained diplomats from as far away as Mongolia, and attended the ceremonial banquet in Beijing's Great Hall of the People on the night the UK handed Hong Kong back to China.

However, it was not all glamour. Her marriage ended in divorce and she came back to Rose Cottage. Her children, Jemma and Daniel, went to Kettlewell Primary, then Skipton High School and Ermysted's.

Then she developed breast cancer - twice - and had to undergo two long periods of chemotherapy.

But after a lifetime of globetrotting, she was restless, needing something to occupy her needle-sharp mind and harness the almost boundless energy which returned when she successfully fought off her cancers.

She had made contact with an Oxford-based conservation group called Worldwatch which, three years ago, gave her a Millennium award and sent her off to Chile.

Her task was to study the local otter population, which is being hunted to the point of extinction by poachers who sell their valuable pelts. That done, she thought: if I can work for otters in South America, why not in Upper Wharfedale?

Back in Rose Cottage, she contacted English Nature and is now working as part of the Upper Wharfedale Best Practice Project, which is trying to get the otter back into the dale.

They have built a false otter holt, or den, by the river - its exact location is a carefully kept secret - and there are unconfirmed reports that an otter-like creature has been seen in the location. Sadly, they are easily confused with wild mink to an inexperienced eye.

It is known, however, that otters have been reported in lower Wharfedale, near Ilkley. But, for a change, I had new information to impart, rather than gather.

I was able to report that, on the last day of the salmon fishing season on the River Lune in October, I stopped fishing my favourite pool to watch an otter hunt fish he had much more right to than me.

Anna listened to this wide-eyed. So there are otters to the south east and perhaps 25 miles to the north west - and these animals can cover distances like that overland in a single night.

Perhaps the day is nigh when one of Britain's most wonderful animals will come home, like Anna Craven, to Cam Gill Beck. Now that's news I would dearly like to report!

One important aspect of Anna's research is to speak to people old enough to remember where otters lived and hunted in Upper Wharfedale. This could help re-establish the animal. Anyone with such information is asked to contact her on 01756 760265