Tribe manages Pacific fishers, old growth
Jerry George

Hoopa Valley Reservation, California: In the steeply cleaved, fog-shrouded mountains of California's northern Coast Range, there are few people, more than a little mystery and tales of strange, seldom-seen beasties.

The venerable groves of Redwood National Park lie midway between Eureka and the state border. To the east of the park, the truly wild country of the Hoopa Valley tribe's reservation provides refuge to endangered marbled murrelets and spotted owls, ringtail cats, Pacific giant salamanders (a stout creature that some say actually barks) and all manner of other natural remnants of the world that greeted the arrival of Europeans.

Cuddly weasel cousin

None of the reservation's denizens is more exotic, and perhaps more threatened, than the photogenic Pacific fisher (they're usually anesthetized when photographed) a hyperactive cousin of weasels and wolverines.

Imagine an elongated, stubby-legged, dark brown to black house cat with an attitude that makes the Tasmanian devil seem like a cherub. Fishers are snarly - really snarly.

The Pacific fisher may seem less than lovable, but the Hupa Indians consider the fisher a culturally significant part of their world and want to ensure that it survives.

Other than mating, which happens in April, adult male and female fishers have little to do with each other. Fishers favor dense old-growth or mature conifer forests with a fair number of rotting or hollow trees for dens. Fishers live and hunt much of the time in the trees. They are amazing climbers with unique ankle joints (also found in squirrels) that allow their hind feet to rotate nearly 180 degrees so they can climb down a tree headfirst.

Most fisher stories start with how these fierce creatures are the only predators that can get the better of a spiny porcupine. These accounts often claim that the fisher somehow slips under the pincushion, flips it over then attacks its soft belly. Not true. Forest legend. The truth is much gutsier.

When attacking a porcupine, the fisher manically circles the beast, waiting for it to turn its head and expose its throat, then darts in for a quick bite, and keeps repeating the attack until the porcupine is either exhausted or bleeds to death. When the beast is finally dead, the fisher then flips it over to feed.

Like most of the weasel family, fishers do like their meat. Squirrels, chipmunks and mice are the fisher's dietary favorites. Fishers also hunt on the ground for animals like chubby marmots. Like bald eagles, they'll also feast happily on the carcasses of spawned-out salmon. If meat becomes scarce, the versatile fisher can survive on fruits and veggies.

When not peripatetically preoccupied with finding food, fishers hole up in tree hollows, usually well off the ground. That means their forest home has to be old-growth or mature with rotting trees. Harvesting a forest for lumber destroys the fisher's habitat.

Ferocious as the fisher is, it also has what fur-coat makers consider a premier pelt, sometimes called the North American sable. At the turn of the past century, fur trapping had brought the fisher to the brink of extinction.

Though fishers were never common, they once ranged through most of the Coastal Mountains down into Marin County and through the Sierra into Kern County. Today there are two small California populations: one south of Yosemite and one along the Klamath River in the northern part of the Hoopa Valley Tribe Reservation.

Forestry and the fisher

The Hoopa Valley tribe's primary source of income is timber harvesting. Internationally recognized by the United Nations and the Forest Stewardship Council as a model for community-based, sustainable forestry, the tribe wanted to be sure their harvesting did not harm the fishers

The tribe asked the Wildlife Conservation Society and Humboldt State University to work with tribal members in wildlife field and laboratory techniques that help them assess the effect of the tribe's forest management on fishers and other wildlife.

Fishers are creatures of habit. Using motion-sensitive cameras focused on baited trees, researchers found fisher paths. Then they trapped the elusive animals humanely, tagged them, took blood and fecal samples and fixed them with radio transmitter collars to allow the fishers to be followed remotely as they went about the business of being fishers.

Trapping for the current program began in 2004. The numbers were alarming. The fisher population showed a 45 percent decline compared with 1998 figures. Continued study has pointed to two possible culprits: disease or increased predator pressure.

The research collaborative is continuing to explore the fisher's habitat to find other limiting factors that might be adversely affecting the fisher. Their ultimate survival is a puzzle of many pieces.

Survival is not a mystery to the Hupa, however. If it is humanly possible, the Hupa will share that gift of life with the Pacific fisher.