Fishers restored to Olympic National Park

0LYMPIC NATIONAL PARK -- The elusive fisher, famous for its fabulous fur and for picking fights with porcupines, has slipped back into the wilds of Washington state. Its mission: to re-establish a homeland.

Fishers, cat-sized members of the weasel family, have been missing from Washington's forest landscape for decades, wiped out by early 20th-century trappers.

On Sunday, biologists released 11 Canadian fishers -- five males and six females -- into the dense thickets of Olympic National Park's Elwha River and Morse Creek drainages, near the Olympic Peninsula city of Port Angeles.

"They just took off like a shot," said Jeff Lewis, a state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist. "You just see a streak of black rushing across the ground and they disappear."

Sunday's release was the first step in a state, federal and privately supported effort to revive the state's population of the sleek, dark carnivores. But it also was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for three Port Angeles, Wash., youngsters invited to help set some of creatures free.

"I couldn't imagine I would be doing this. This is something to pass down to my children," said Kelsey Coffman, 13.

While dozens of invited guests watched, Kelsey and two fellow club members helped biologists open wooden boxes and release the final three fishers.

One of the students, Forrest Emmett, said he'd only recently learned what fishers are. The next time he goes camping in the park, he said he'll try to catch a glimpse of another.

But biologists say that's not likely. Fishers avoid people.

"To me, the mystery of them is a huge fascination," said Lewis, the biologist who is spearheading the relocation. It's a collaborative effort of the park, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Forest Service, Conservation Northwest and others.

"I've been working on it since 1997," said Lewis. "It's a long time coming."

While Canada's fisher population is hardy, on the U.S. West Coast, fishers have been on the official waiting list for federal Endangered Species Act protection since 2004.

"If we can get them re-established (in Washington), we're one step closer to getting them re-established throughout their West Coast range," said Laura Finley, a California-based U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologist. "It's going to be one little step at a time."

Over the next three years, biologists plan to trap at least 100 fishers from central British Columbia and set them free in the Olympic Peninsula's old-growth forests.

It's an expensive effort. Lewis estimated the project will cost about $650,000 by the time it's finished. So far, he has pinned down sources for $450,000, he said.

Biologists decided to release the fishers in Olympic National Park because it has the kind of undisturbed lowland forests where fishers are comfortable. They hunt on the ground, but they hang out in tall trees, including dead ones. They nest in hollow logs and tree cavities, sometimes using holes pounded out by pileated woodpeckers, said Keith Aubry, a U.S. Forest Service biologist.

"It's an amazing thing for a carnivore," he said.

Fishers also have a history in Olympic National Park.

Aubry said trapping records show fishers once were abundant on the Olympic Peninsula.

In the early part of the 20th century, fisher pelts were second only to sea otters in value, Aubry said. The fur is coarser and longer than mink, but still quite soft. In the 1920s, when prices might have peaked, a trapper might fetch as much as $150 for a single prime pelt, he said.

But fishers are solitary creatures, range over wide areas and don't rapidly reproduce. When Victor Scheffler, a biologist for what was then the U.S. Biological Survey -- now the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service -- arrived on the Olympic Peninsula in the 1930s, trappers told him fishers were increasingly scarce.

In 1934, state officials banned trapping for fisher.

Sunday's release isn't the first time people have moved fishers from one place to another to bring back missing populations. Beginning in 1947, so-called translocations have occurred at least 35 times in 14 states and six Canadian provinces. And most of time they've worked, Lewis found through research.

However, in most places the motive was not fisher conservation. It was porcupines, considered pests in timber country because they girdle trees. People brought in fishers because they efficiently hunt porcupines.

Contact Susan Gordon at susan.Gordon(at)thenewstribune.com)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)