By: Alex Day, WNPF Marketing/Communications & Database Director
In the heart of the Pacific Northwest, Washington’s national parks have long been a haven for diverse wildlife and breathtaking landscapes. One captivating story of conservation success is the ongoing effort to reintroduce the elusive fisher (Pekania pennanti) to its native habitat within these pristine wilderness areas.
A state-wide partnership across many organizations, and with funding support from groups like Washington’s National Park Fund, these efforts have been making significant strides in restoring these ecosystems and bringing fishers home. On a cool, misty July morning, I met up with a field team at Mowich Lake in Mount Rainier National Park to learn more about this fifteen-plus-year effort and joined them as they extracted a camera trap secured deep in the forest.
The fisher is a carnivorous member of the weasel family. They once thrived across the forests of Washington state up into British Columbia, but over-trapping and habitat loss caused their populations to dwindle to the brink of extinction by the mid-1900s. Recognizing the critical role these predators play in maintaining ecological equilibrium, conservationists and scientists launched an ambitious effort to reintroduce fishers to their former homes in Washington’s Olympic peninsula and the Cascades.
Starting with the release of the first fishers in Olympic National Park in 2008, generous contributions from donors have made a huge difference, supporting the purchase of the fishers from trappers in Canada and the equipment used to track them, hiring of specialized personnel, and educational programs to engage local communities in the conservation efforts.
The process of fisher reintroduction is a meticulous one. It involves not only releasing these agile creatures into the wild but also closely monitoring their progress to ensure the populations are surviving and reproducing.
Kristin Rine is a wildlife biologist at North Cascades National Park. As the field lead for the Fisher Reintroduction project, she and her team are tasked with using remote cameras, radio telemetry, and DNA analysis to track the movement, behavior, and breeding success of reintroduced individuals. This data provides invaluable insights into the adaptability of fishers to their surroundings and the overall health of the ecosystem.
In this phase of the project, the transmitters that were implanted into the captured fishers prior to release have died and new tracking techniques are needed. Biologists like Kristin, along with park staff and volunteers, have been working hard to set up grids of camera systems throughout the Olympics, Cascades, and surrounding forests that are motion-activated. Collecting thousands of images throughout the year, the captures are reviewed in hopes of spotting the elusive fishers.
The goal at this stage of the project is to establish a baseline understanding of occupancy, and which fishers are still in the area. Once all the cameras are collected, the next step is analyzing the data. Kristin and her team will work to create an occupancy model and assess the population distribution – which will then inform the next stage in monitoring. The data collected will not only “provide a broad initial idea of reintroduction success,” says Kristin, but also “provide a good baseline for future monitoring efforts.”
The camera trap set-up involves installing a small camera on the side of a tree, as well as a roof over it to prevent moisture from getting inside and damaging the camera. Across from the camera, on a similarly sized tree, an automatic scent dispenser is affixed that leaks a very smelly skunk lure that animals can smell from miles away onto a bone right underneath it.
Below that, a hair snare belt is installed – that way, when animals climb up the tree to try and get the bone, they leave some of their hair behind. “If we can get DNA amplification from the hair after we send it into a lab, then hopefully it’ll tell us which individuals were out there, whether they’re the initial founders or their offspring,” says Kristin.
On the day that I joined Kristin in the field, she and Hannah, another wildlife biologist at North Cascades National Park, and I hiked a short way – about 500 feet – uphill from the road to collect a camera. Once they had located the camera trap, they quickly set up the retractable ladder that they had carried in on their backs and began removing the camera and its associated equipment. They also spent time checking the camera itself and the lure, to see how much was left – an indicator that the camera remained active for the duration of the season. Finally, they did a quick check of the surrounding area in search of animal scat, for more evidence of who may have visited the scent trap.
Being a wildlife biologist at a national park might sound like a dream job – and Kristin would probably agree. I asked her what she liked most about her job. Her response?
“I guess the question is what I don’t like about my job! You could say that handling skunk lure is a bad part of it, but my nose kind of got used to it over time, so really there’s not a whole lot that I don’t love. I get to be out in nature. I get to be with great people. And I get to feel like I’m having a positive effect on these ecosystems that I love.”
Even some of the challenges inherent in her work make her smile. One of the most common issues she finds with the cameras they recover is damage caused by tampering. The culprit, often, is curious bears. “We definitely find that occasionally animals mess with our setup. They’ll chew on the hair snares or they’ll try and get at the bone. Some of them can even tell where the camera is and we get their little noses in front of the sensors,” laughs Kristin. “It’s pretty fun.”
In the tapestry of conservation achievements, the fisher reintroduction effort stands as a testament to the resilience of nature and the unwavering dedication of those who strive to protect it, including Kristin and the wildlife biologists of the National Park Service.
“These animals are incredibly special, just like every other animal in the landscape. I think it’s a great thing to give them a new home, and a home that they should have had all along without our interference.”
– Kristin Rine, Wildlife Biologist at North Cascades National Park
As these predators gradually reclaim their role in the food web, the delicate balance of these ecosystems is being restored, benefiting not only the fishers themselves but countless other species that depend on their presence.
Thanks to the combined efforts of researchers, conservationists, donors to Washington’s National Park Fund, and many more invested stakeholders, these charismatic creatures are once again roaming the ancient forests of Washington’s national parks, reminding us of the indomitable spirit of wild places. And with a bit of luck, we hope to soon see evidence that they are reproducing, making Washington once again a home for future generations of fishers.
Washington’s National Park Fund is the official philanthropic partner to Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks. With your help, we raise private support to preserve and protect Washington’s national parks, funding scientific research, youth and family experiences, and projects that will keep these parks strong and vital now and forever, for everyone. You can support projects like this one with a donation at wnpf.org/donate.
Cover photo by Mount Rainier/NPS Emily Brouwer.