Hunt offers way to understand nature of nature

PRIEST LAKE, Idaho – Shaded by the thick canopy of an old-growth forest, biologist Jennifer Soules dabbed skunk essence on a small piece of sponge and hung the stench beacon from a branch. A colleague dribbled beaver castor oil into a tubular trap resting on the snow below the branch.

The scent smorgasbord, plus a morsel of roadkill deer meat, is meant to lure a fisher into the trap. The elusive forest creature won’t be hurt, or even detained. Soules merely hopes it will stay long enough to rub up against a wire brush inside the device and leave behind a hair or two as proof of its existence.

The creatures were believed to have been trapped, shot or chased from most of the West more than 75 years ago. But reports have trickled in that perhaps fishers were never gone. Until recently, no one has bothered to look.

“It really is a big unknown,” said Soules, who works for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. “There’s just a real hole in the knowledge of where fishers are, how many we’ve got and where they came from.”

The fisher study is a small piece of a larger nationwide effort to better understand creatures that were once ignored by state fish and game management agencies, which have previously focused nearly all of their research work on boosting the populations of species that can be hunted or fished. The change comes as part of a growing awareness of the importance of preserving what’s left, said Chuck Harris, nongame species coordinator for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

The study is also part of an attempt by both Idaho and Washington to develop comprehensive statewide conservation strategies. The U.S. Congress has asked for these conservation blueprints, as they are being called, from most states by October. The studies are meant to capture the diversity and abundance of all wildlife species, as well as identify species with the greatest need for conservation, Harris said.

Since 2001, Idaho has spent $500,000 to $800,000 annually on nongame research, with funding coming from a combination of federal grants, as well as matching dollars from the sale of state wildlife license plates and income tax checkoffs. But while no hunting and fishing license revenue has been spent on the project, hunters and anglers will eventually benefit, Harris said. Elk and trout cannot exist in an ecological vacuum – their health is largely dependent on a rich, functioning ecosystem.

Creatures like fishers, big-eared bats, spotted frogs, black swifts and countless others are “components of the ecosystem,” Harris said. “They’ve got a role out there, but often we don’t completely understand the role they play. There’s all these interrelationships and they’re extremely complex.

“We don’t know everything there is to know about ecology. This isn’t rocket science. This is far more complex. When you’re dealing with rocket science, you’re dealing with physics and known quantities. We don’t understand what happens all the time in ecosystems.”

State officials hope the research being conducted on nongame wildlife species will provide the information needed to develop an ecosystemwide approach to conservation, rather than devoting millions of dollars to saving struggling individual species listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act, Harris said. Nationally, about $70 million is being devoted to the effort.

“In the long term it’s going to pay off,” Harris said. “It’s nothing compared with the recovery of a listed species’ costs.”

Last year, the U.S. Forest Service, with funding and assistance from the University of Idaho and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, began the fisher study.

The study simply focused on determining if the animals exist in Idaho. Preliminary results show fishers are living in the Clearwater, Lochsa and St. Joe river areas, said Sam Cushman, the Forest Service’s lead researcher on the study.

Genetic testing is expected to be completed by fall to determine if the fishers are offspring from animals transplanted here in recent decades from Minnesota, Wisconsin or British Columbia. Fishers have long been an ally to foresters because they are one of the few animals that regularly prey on tree-chewing porcupines, Cushman said.

“Our data are too preliminary to make a judgment on whether (the hair samples) are native or not,” Cushman said. “We have one sample that suggests there are fishers that may be native.”

Soules, the Idaho Fish and Game biologist, is continuing the research project on state lands near Priest Lake, which is some of the wildest terrain in North Idaho.

Finding a single hair in the middle of the wilderness from an animal that might not even exist is no easy task, but Soules and her team have faith in their 100-plus hair traps. The team travels to each trap every two weeks, carefully eyeing the wire brushes inside for hairs that might be no larger than an eyelash.

On a sunny afternoon in February, the group traveled a 20-mile backcountry route by snowmobile, stopping periodically to check traps. No one in the group has seen a fisher in the wild – the animal bounds through the snow like a wiener dog, weighs about as much as a house cat and looks vaguely like an otter. Although fishers are shy, they are reputed to be fierce predators.

At one trap, wildlife technician Vincent Slabe spotted a suspicious hair. He donned a pair of latex gloves – to avoid possible contamination – and used a pair of tweezers to transfer the hair to a sealed bag. The trap was in a pile of brush under a canopy of hemlock and cedar thick enough to keep out all but a few needles of sunlight.

“It would be a huge thing just to prove they’re here, if they are,” Slabe said, working to the soundtrack of a nearby cascading creek.

Although fishers don’t attract the attention and passions of species like wolves, grizzly bears and caribou, Slabe said he considers his work to be important, even if fisher populations never stage a comeback in Idaho.

“For years to come we can say we did our best,” Slabe said.

Nearby, Soules made sure the skunk and beaver scents were carefully stowed in sealed plastic buckets. “There’s never a time to not gather more information,” she said. “You don’t know what’s out there until you start looking.”