Sleek Critters Get Second Chance

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — The elusive fisher, famous for its fabulous fur and for picking fights with porcupines, slipped back into the wilds of Washington Sunday.

Its mission: to re-establish a homeland.

Fishers, cat-sized members of the weasel family, have been missing from Washington’s forest landscape for decades, wiped out by early 20th-century trappers.

On Sunday, biologists released 11 Canadian fishers — five males and six females — into the dense thickets of the park’s Elwha River and Morse Creek drainages, near the Olympic Peninsula city of Port Angeles.

"They just took off like a shot," said Jeff Lewis, a state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist. "You just see a streak of black rushing across the ground and they disappear."

Sunday’s release was the first step in a state, federal and privately supported effort to revive the state’s population of the sleek, dark carnivores. But it also was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for three Port Angeles youngsters invited to help set some of creatures free.

"I couldn’t imagine I would be doing this. This is something to pass down to my children," said Kelsey Coffman, 13, a member of the Animal Activists club at Stevens Middle School.

While dozens of invited guests — including news media and the children’s parents — watched, Kelsey and two fellow club members helped biologists open wooden boxes and release the final three fishers near an Elwha River campground. The participants kept quiet as each fisher bolted into the woods. Muted cheering and clapping followed.

One of the students, Forrest Emmett, said he’d only recently learned what fishers are. The next time he goes camping in the park, he said he’ll try to catch a glimpse of another.

But biologists say that’s not likely. Fishers avoid people.

"To me, the mystery of them is a huge fascination," said Lewis, the biologist who is spearheading the relocation. It’s a collaborative effort of the park, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Forest Service, Conservation Northwest and others.

"I’ve been working on it since 1997," said Lewis. "It’s a long time coming."

While Canada’s fisher population is hardy, on the U.S. West Coast, fishers have been on the official waiting list for federal Endangered Species Act protection since 2004.

"If we can get them re-established (in Washington), we’re one step closer to getting them re-established throughout their West Coast range," said Laura Finley, a California-based U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologist. "It’s going to be one little step at a time."

Over the next three years, biologists plan to trap at least 100 fishers from central British Columbia and set them free in the Olympic Peninsula’s old-growth forests.

It’s an expensive effort. Lewis estimated the project will cost about $650,000 by the time it’s finished. So far, he has pinned down sources for $450,000, he said.

That includes nearly $100,000 funneled through Bellingham-based Conservation Northwest. The group paid the trappers who captured the fishers in British Columbia’s Williams Lake area.

It’s an expensive project in part because biologists plan to track the fishers after their release and must do much of it from airplanes because of the rough terrain, Lewis said.

Biologists decided to release the fishers in Olympic National Park because it has the kind of undisturbed lowland forests where fishers are comfortable. They hunt on the ground, but they hang out in tall trees, including dead ones. They nest in hollow logs and tree cavities, sometimes using holes pounded out by pileated woodpeckers, said Keith Aubry, a U.S. Forest Service biologist.

"It’s an amazing thing for a carnivore," he said.

Fishers also have a history in Olympic National Park.

Aubry, who is perhaps the region’s most knowledgeable fisher expert, said trapping records show fishers once were abundant on the Olympic Peninsula. Many were taken from the Queets and Quinault river drainages, on the west side of the park, where future releases are planned.

In the early part of the 20th century, fisher pelts were second only to sea otters in value, Aubry said. The fur is coarser and longer than mink, but still quite soft. In the 1920s, when prices might have peaked, a trapper might fetch as much as $150 for a single prime pelt, he said.

But fishers are solitary creatures, range over wide areas and don’t rapidly reproduce. When Victor Scheffler, a biologist for what was then the U.S. Biological Survey — now the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service — arrived on the Olympic Peninsula in the 1930s, trappers told him fishers were increasingly scarce.

In 1934, state officials banned trapping for fisher.

"Even by then, there was concern," said Patti Happe, Olympic National Park’s wildlife branch chief. She said Scheffler recorded his observations in a recently republished monograph titled "Mammals of the Olympic Peninsula."

Sunday’s release isn’t the first time people have moved fishers from one place to another to bring back missing populations. Beginning in 1947, so-called translocations have occurred at least 35 times in 14 states and six Canadian provinces. And most of time they’ve worked, Lewis found through research.

However, in most places the motive was not fisher conservation. It was porcupines, considered pests in timber country because they girdle trees. People brought in fishers because they efficiently hunt porcupines. Aubry also suspects fishers possess a natural tolerance for quill-related injuries, he said.

Fishers are agile, lightning-fast and fierce. When they go after porcupines, they repeatedly nip their noses and bite at their heads until porcupines back down, Lewis said. At that point, fishers flip the porcupines over, rip open their stomachs and eat.

An overabundance of porcupines in Oregon’s southern Cascade Range prompted Oregon officials and timber companies to bring in fishers from Minnesota and British Columbia between 1977 and 1981.

"The fishers did take hold, but there’s no documentation of whether it affected the porcupines," Aubry said.

On the Olympic Peninsula, the fishers are the first creatures reintroduced since a group of 59 sea otters were delivered from Alaska in 1969 and 1970.

In Canada, trappers began catching the fishers for translocation in mid-December, baiting live traps with beaver meat. Before biologists trucked them across the border, a veterinarian checked the health of each animal. Biologists took blood and genetic samples and tagged each fisher for future identification. Radio transmitters were surgically implanted in the abdomens of three of the fishers, Happe said. The others will wear radio collars.

The research team will track the movement of each individual to monitor survival and habitat use. Also, researchers will try to locate the dens of the females, who could give birth this spring.

"It’ll take a while for them to settle in because it will be foreign to them," Aubry said.

Olympic National Park isn’t burdened with problem porcupines, so biologists expect the newly introduced fishers to prey on the park’s snowshoes hares, among other creatures. But because fishers are not top predators, they don’t expect the newcomers to dominate their surroundings, Happe said.

Returning fishers to Olympic isn’t comparable to reintroducing the wolf to Yellowstone National Park, she said. Fishers aren’t likely to change the habits of elk and deer.

"It won’t be as dramatic," Happe said, "but it will be as real."

Susan Gordon: 253-597-8756

fisher facts

Scientific name: Martes pennanti

Official status: Since 1998, endangered in Washington. Since 2004, West Coast populations have been on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service waiting list for federal Endangered Species Act protection.

–Largest member of the weasel family, which includes mink, otter, sable and marten.

–Thin, with short legs. Long, bushy tails account for about a third of the fisher’s length.

–Mostly dark brown, with black, gold or silver guard hairs.

–On the West Coast, males weigh about 11 pounds. Females average 6. In Eastern North America, fishers are larger.

–Life span may be as long as 10 years.

–Prefers low-elevation forests with tall trees, snags and fallen trees and limbs. Avoids large open areas, such as clearcuts.

–Feeds on snowshoe hares, squirrels, mice and birds, among other animals. Also consumes truffles, fruit, insects and carrion. Known for unique porcupine-hunting tactics.

–Young are called kits and are born hairless and completely dependent upon their mothers, who nurse them for 8 to 10 weeks.