Park hopes to find fishers in study

Every year, Glacier National Park biologist John Waller gets about a half-dozen reports from people who claim to have seen a fisher in the Park.

But the reports don’t come with photos. A few years ago Waller tried setting up some “hair traps” in the Park in hopes of snaring some fisher hair in wire brushes, but to no avail.

Now the Park will give it one last go. Through a $20,000 grant from the Glacier National Park Fund, a Park-wide fisher survey using bait stations and camera traps will try to, once and for all, see if there are truly any fishers in Glacier Park.

The fisher is a cousin to the pine marten and the wolverine. It’s larger than a marten, although its fur is usually darker. Fishers have a long tail and a mink-like appearance — they’re about the size of a cat.

The Park study will take place in winter months to avoid conflicts with bears, Waller noted. The fisher inhabits old-growth forest and likes large trees and downed timber. They’re known as a porcupine specialist — one of the few animals adept at killing and eating the spiny creatures.

Glacier Park was home to many porcupines in the 1950s. The Hungry Horse News once prominently displayed a vehicle surrounded by a cage to keep porcupines away. Porcupines like to chew on salty tires and brake lines of vehicles.

But in recent decades, porcupines have dwindled in the Park, and sightings of them are few and far between.

Waller said he doesn’t hold much hope for finding fishers. He cited years of wolverine studies in the Park using bait and camera traps that never turned up a fisher when the two species’ habitats overlap.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey has an ongoing effort to reintroduce fishers in Olympic National Park, in Washington. To date, about 90 fishers have been released in there. The animals were live-caught in British Columbia and transported to the park from 2007 to 2010, said Kurt Jenkins of the USGS.

Jenkins said the new population has shown signs of settling in, and fishers are denning and showing natural reproduction. Olympic National Park, however, doesn’t have porcupines. The fishers there eat snowshoe hares, squirrels, mountain beavers and birds, Jenkins said.