Fisher Release 2016

[JakeLand]

Have any of these biologists looked into what impacts a new/introduced population of Fisher could have on the existing Marten population in an area where they would share habitat and available prey? Would like to hear what those BC trappers have to say about that. Sounds like they're just trying to get Fishers out as fast as possible, who cares about Marten, grouse, etc.

Hmmm good thinking but if someone paid me cash to say catch cats,marten or whatever and a way better price then a auction and no skinning fleshing  I would do it ! but I am curious if they did do a study and and hopefully it wasn't the same that did the wolf study

Conservation North West came up with the money for the study. WSTA asked about the effect on marten but pretty much ignored. The fact is they had money lined up to reintroduce them and they were not going to pass that up. Once there is money to keep bios on the payroll the project is probably not going to be derailed plus there was no opposition.
My thoughts were WSTA might as well be engaged because it is happening whether we like it or not.

  You're absolutely right that way you know what's what and I still think it's pretty cool the only Fischer I've seen eye to eye is in AK from what sign I've seen this year in my area we've got a good population of marten we'll just see if I can convince them to go in my cages

[Trapper John]

That's great, John!
I wish that this event would have gotten more publicity prior to the release, and been open to the general public - I would have loved to have been there!

Tom,
The first release got all of the press.  Everybody and their brother I think showed up.  TV Film Crews, Newspapers & Magazine Companies,a bunch of people and everybody with some sort of a camera.
The second release was December 23, 2015 and who show up I don't know but they said everybody had a hard time getting up there due to so much snow.
This one it was raining hard all the way up and at time of release the sun came out, but there was still 40-50 people there.

Cool looking animals, big and fast runners.  I think they took off fast because they knew two trappers were out there      I'm thinking those Fisher are trying to put some distance away from Bruce and I.

I hope to go to the next couple releases.  This time I'm going to bring a movie camera
JC   

[Trapper John]

Hi Folks,
I find this Fisher Release Program interesting but than again I have always found wildlife interesting.  When I was a young guy I always wanted to work with small wildlife and thought about going to school and becoming a Biologist but than girls came along, I quit school and got married young and became a trapper.

In 1989 I has asked if I could teach a Biologist how to trap coyotes for his Urban coyote study that he was going to do in the Seattle / Bellevue area.  It was a two year program.  I spent about sixty hours with him and we trapped and radio-collared a dozen coyotes and let them go.  At the time I was also trapping  a lot of coyotes for a Rancher so I gave him the carcasses so he could work on blood samples, stomach contents etc.  I also show him what coyote dropping looked like so he had an idea.

He picked up 900 pieces of scat in four months.  Hair doesn't dissolve so they can see what the animal is eating.  In 900 pieces of scat 1/3 of the coyote diet was mice & rats and 2/3 was (Your going to love this) "house cats" all in the Urban / Metropolitan areas.  They also eat a lot of fruit such as blackberries, apples and plumbs.

This fisher research is going to DNA now beside the hair samples.  What is interesting about this research project is that they have a "Dog Handling Group".  Their job is to have the dogs run out and find "Fisher Poop."  They pick it up and give it to the researchers so they can find out what the fisher is eating.  I'm thinking its back to the hair samples.   They have also found several Fisher dead that were killed by predators.  I asked the question to one of the Leading Researchers and here is what she said:

We know that bobcats and one cougar killed some of our female fishers because we were able to get on some of the kills soon enough that swabs of the wound sites contained enough saliva, that the lab could get DNA and identify the predator - kind of a fisher CSI.  Many of the kills, however, were too far gone for us to ID the predator - so some may have been take by coyotes, but we were never able to document that.

I am planning on staying in touch with these people and writing about this Fisher Research in our upcoming issues in our newsletter.  Stay tune I think this reintroduction and release of the Fisher will be a positive issue for us trappers.
JC   



 

[jasnt]

You had to teach a biologist what coyote scat looked like.  

Looking forward to the updates