Fishers in the eastern US
I’ve always found fishers to be incredibly cool animals, and have always wanted to see one. In the 90s, they were reintroduced to my home state of Pennsylvania. They appear to be doing extremely well there.
As a conservationist, I find some of the current trends in fisher populations interesting. For years, fishers have been reported as one of those animals that need huge, unbroken tracts of forest…what I would normally associate with places like the Rocky Mountains.
But fishers appear to be doing much better in the eastern United States than in the Rockies. There are more fishers in my home state of Pennsylvania than my current state of Idaho. I wrote a blog at Idaho Nature Notes on this subject, and the fact that fishers may have different needs than we first imagined.
I’d love to spend some time back in Pennsylvania looking around for a fisher. It’s encouraging that they’re now thriving there as they are in Maine and other eastern states.
5 Comments
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Matt Miller
Coke, cool photos. I really need to get to the Olympic Peninsula!
Bob, yes, I have seen the elk in Pennsylvania. When we lived there, my wife and I enjoyed visiting the Benezette area to look for them–usually very reliable in the fall.
Vladimir, have you seen fishers near Ottawa? Given your trip reports, I would guess you’ve seen them somewhere…
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Vladimir Dinets
Matt, I’ve seen them in late winter in Algonquin PP (at a rate of one per day), in summer in Wood Buffalo area, and after a lot of searching in the Sierra Nevada. But my friends who live in the outskirts of Ottawa see them around their house pretty often, even at bird feeders.
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Coke Smith
Great to hear that things are going well for the fisher back east. I know the reintroduction in Olympic National Park has been at least moderately successful and breeding has been documented. Here is a link to some images of the very first fishers being released in to ONP!
This link – scroll down and you will find them:
http://www.pbase.com/cokesmith/image/121208782
http://cokesmithphototravel.com/Animals_of_the_Olympic_Peninsula.html