Think your holiday travel is hard?
When the weather outside is frightful, news on the latest wildlife success sure is delightful. Over the last 2 winters, nearly 50 fisher came to the Olympic Peninsula from BC, with a little help from Conservation Northwest and our partners. This year, even more of these elusive forest mammals are starting their journey to bolster northwest biodiversity, and their trip makes the airport this Wednesday look easy. But, in the end, their travels and the travails of those finding our newest residents are well worth the effort, biologically speaking.
This winter, Averal will make her long journey to join the other fisher we have already released in the Olympic Peninsula. The return of fisher bolsters the biodiversity and brings back a species once completely extirpated from the state.
The opening lines to a holiday song are going through my mind as the wind howls and rains pours outside my Bellingham office window... “Oh the weather outside is frightful…”
I’m trying to find a bright spot in the gray, and into my email box comes notice that our third fisher of this season has been trapped in northern British Columbia. This brings back great memories of a snowy fisher release that I got to participate in last January in the Queets River drainage. That was such a great weekend!
The newest fisher to arrive this season, Averal, is in her temporary home at Evans Lake Training Centre in Williams Lake, BC. She is awaiting more fishers to join her before being transported down to Olympic National Park, where she will join the others we worked to reintroduce last year, who seem to be enjoying their new old-growth forest . Several kits were born this spring as well!
I asked Don and Marg Evans, our fisher foster parents, so to speak, about the intense work required to capture and house these fishers until they are released in the US. The Evanses face intense weather (it’s regularly minus 30 degrees C below zero), heavy ice and snow, falling trees, not to mention the sheer time it takes to cover some of the long distances to meet the trappers and pick up the fisher; one route takes 15 hours!Caring for the animals until their official release, including building their houses, feeding, etc. comes with its own challenges, too. Don and Marg both have other jobs and just do this on the side, having also helped more than a decade ago with the translocation of fishers from the Cariboo Chilcotin area to the Kootenays.
Yet all this work for fisher doesn't seem to bother them one bit.
"We love the natural environment and the incredible wildlife ever present even at our back door. We are witness to their daily struggles with nature and human challenges. From our view, working on translocations such as this fisher project assures us that if a catastrophe strikes--disease, habitat loss, etc.--and a species is extirpated in one area, there is still a source in another to one day replenish it,” Marg said. “Along with this, we have an ever present fascination with the ‘personalities’ and adaptability of these fishers. It was such a thrill to see the photos of your first fisher offspring with their moms, and later as sub-adults! It has also been great to be working with everyone in Washington on such a worthwhile effort. The positive energy has been inspiring."
I still look upon the 45 fisher released over the past two winters as one of Conservation Northwest’s great success stories, both because we yet again showed that partnerships pay off (this time with the Washington Dept of Fish & Wildlife and Olympic National Park), and because we took another giant leap to ensure a wilder and more biologically diverse Northwest for future generations.
I look forward to another year of successful fisher releases and healthier Washington ecosystems because of it!
