Return of the Fishers

A furry predator is returning to the forests of Washington thanks to years of collaboration.

Story by Ysobelle Montero

June 12, 2021

It’s 2017, and bright cheers echo throughout the evergreen forest of Longmire, Washington, just south of Mount Rainier, as Nisqually Tribal Council member Hanford McCloud and his children help release about half a dozen sleek-furred and slender animals, each the size of a housecat, from their wooden boxes. One by one, these fishers bound into the trees like scared cats. One comes running back, unsure of where to go. McCloud is overjoyed, continuing to cheer the fisher on until it, too, finds its way home.

“It was actually pretty heartfelt. You know that warm feeling you get when you’re doing something good and your whole body overcomes with joy,” Hanford said

The reintroduction of fishers in Washington has become a multi-decade project that people working on it say will continue until fisher populations are self-sustainable.

After decades of their absence, fishers, a local predator once eradicated from the state, are steadily climbing back up the food chain. Due to the zealous efforts between a number of partners, restoring the species to its former glory is becoming a reality.

Fishers are predators within the weasel family, sporting small rounded ears and rich, dark brown fur that lightens in the spring. They are are adaptable hunters and eat anything from snowshoe hares, porcupines and beavers to insects and fruit. They prefer dense forests, which are crucial to denning and reproduction.

Fishers were an abundant species in Washington up until the mid-1900s, when their pelts sold for between $200 and $300. Today, that would be up to $4,500 per pelt.

“They were worth a lot of money,” said McCloud, whose tribe is part of the restoration effort. “You can see now why they were killed and trapped.” Decades ago, McCloud’s own ancestor hunted fishers for their fur.

In 1998, the species was listed as endangered in Washington after surveys conducted by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) failed to detect them.

“Fishers were generally lost because they were over-trapped and over-exploited before there were regulations to protect them,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a conservation biologist for the WDFW, which is also helping to release the new fishers.

The disappearance of a predator from an ecosystem can create a vacuum and have significant impacts on that system and the surrounding environment. If that data wasn’t already being recorded, the effects aren’t always obvious or measurable, according to Patti Happe, the Olympic National Park wildlife branch chief.

Nonetheless, restoring a predator to one of its natural habitats still has its benefits. The fisher would help fill a niche just as they had before their extinction in Washington in the mid-1900s.

“When you have your full suite of species that occur in these landscapes, your ecosystem is more resilient to responding to natural disturbances and the kinds of changes that we’re expecting under climate change,” said Dave Werntz, a science and conservation director for Conservation Northwest, a Seattle-based nonprofit working on the fisher restoration effort.

But reintroductions aren’t always successful and require lengths of research before any animal is relocated, Lewis said. To ensure this project would be possible, biologists needed to do their homework to ensure all of the elements of reintroduction had been considered.

“The evidence is that this works if you have habitat,” Lewis said. “If you don’t have habitat, it ain’t gonna work, but if you have habitat, and we do, this is doable.”

In a feasibility assessment published by the WDFW in 2004, appropriate habitat was found in the Olympic Peninsula, the west Cascades and the east Cascades.

Fishers have a tendency to roam onto federal lands. Along with conservation groups, national parks and the WDFW, partnerships with forest land managers played a big role in supporting fisher reintroduction efforts.

“[The WDFW] entered into agreements with these private landowners in order to make sure that there’s good understanding about what the implications are if a fisher were to take up habitat on these big private landowners’ properties,” Werntz said. “By and large, it’s been a big success.”

As of June 2020, 81 fishers from British Columbia, Canada, and 12 fishers from Alberta, Canada, have been released into the South Cascades ecosystem. Ninety fishers from British Columbia were released into Olympic National Park between 2008 and 2010. Eighty-nine fishers have also been translocated from Alberta into the North Cascades.

Before fishers are released, veterinarians implant transmitters that emit radio signals.

“They’re giant weasels, so they’re not exactly cuddly,” Happe said. “The only times I’ve handled them is when they’ve been anesthetized.”

To gather data on the health, reproduction patterns and locations of each fisher, Werntz and other researchers must climb into an aircraft and find signals from above, including in the rugged North Cascades.

“We fly as much as we can in those early spring months because that’s one of the more important objectives, to establish and document reproduction,” Werntz said. “The biggest limit on flying is weather.”

Fishers are generally shy animals and are difficult to spot, so biologists also use carefully positioned cameras to gather data about the fishers’ dens.

Researchers like Happe mount motion-sensing cameras called ‘traps’ to trees within main fisher habitats. They hang chicken drumsticks from tree branches to lure fishers (and the occasional curious cougar, bear or human) out for photoshoots. The traps are equipped with hair-snagging brushes to help researchers collect DNA.

Local tribes provided much of the manpower needed for this type of monitoring, according to Happe. Indigenous groups like the Makah Tribe, Lummi Nation and Nisqually Indian Tribe were very supportive of the project and were present for the fishers’ releases. Leaders of the tribes came together to celebrate the success of the project.

“To bring back a species like this is unheard of,” McCloud said. “We’re human beings — we take everything.”

Currently, researchers don’t have concrete numbers on the growing fisher population, but have evidence in some areas of second and third generation fishers from the groups that were initially released. A female fisher in the North Cascades was spotted on camera with four kits in April. According to the WDFW, these kits are the first wild-born fishers in that area in half a century.

The sighting is an indication of fisher recovery, but there’s still more work to be done. Researchers from Olympic National Park are hoping to release 10 more fishers this fall to increase population diversity.

Werntz, who has been around since the beginning, hopes that this collaboration inspires future projects and shows big accomplishments are possible together.

“It’s amazing to have the ability to do something like this, where you really come together in partnership and decide to do something that’s really tough, but what’s important and necessary,” Werntz said. “That’s not just inspiring to me, but I hope it’s inspiring to others. If we can do this again and continue to do this, we can accomplish a lot.”

Ysobelle Montero is a senior studying environmental journalism at Western Washington University.