Fisher Resurgence: Once extinct in Pennsylvania forests, a big active predator is on the rebound

By Ben Moyer / Special to the Post-Gazette

The fisher, Pennsylvania’s second-largest member of the weasel family (the river otter is largest), is poorly named. “Mouser” or “squirreler” might be better.

Although fishers prey on diverse food sources, fish are not part of their diet. Small rodents, rabbits, squirrels and carrion make up much of the menu, and fishers are effective predators of porcupines where that prey is available. But biologists who have worked to re-establish the fisher, once extinct in Pennsylvania, concede it will eat almost any wild creature that doesn’t eat it first.

“In fishers, we’ve seen the most diverse diet, including each other, of all forest predators; there’s nothing they won’t eat,” said Matt Lovallo, wildlife biologist in the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Game Mammals Section. “With some food items like deer, whether it’s predation or scavenging, we don’t know. We do understand that hunters have an intuitive concern about turkeys because fishers are skilled tree climbers, but birds are very limited among the food items we’ve analyzed.”

The name fisher has roots in the older French word “fichet,” which applied to the polecat, a European weasel. Known to scientists as Martes pennanti, fishers are weasel-like in appearance but larger, cloaked in dark brown to black fur, sometimes brindled with white or silver. Big males can exceed 4 feet from snout to tail tip with the heavily furred tail accounting for about a third of the total length. The sharply triangular head is topped with short rounded ears. Adult males generally range between 9 to 12 pounds, with the largest specimens nearly doubling that weight. Females are smaller.

Question

Should the state Game Commission invest resources into restoring extirpated wildlife or focus on improving conditions for Pennsylvania hunters?

50%

Restoring wildlife

14%

Improving hunting

36%

Both

Fishers are forest-dependent and currently range all across Canada’s forest belt, but their original distribution embraced the Great Lakes and extended southward along the Rocky and Appalachian mountain chains. As native Appalachian and Midwestern forests were cleared in the 19th century, fishers disappeared from the region. But as second-growth woodland reclaimed much of the landscape, biologists in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Michigan and Wisconsin sought to re-establish fishers in those states.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Fisher Management Plan states that West Virginia released fishers captured in New Hampshire as early as 1969. New York followed in the 1980s by re-locating fishers from a remnant Adirondack population to other forested tracts. Most significantly, between 1994 and 1998, Game Commission biologists working cooperatively with Frostburg University released 190 fishers at six heavily forested sites across northern Pennsylvania. Fishers have been sighted, crushed on highways and caught accidentally in traps with increasing frequency ever since.

“Fisher reintroductions have been a success across the Northeast and Midwest, maybe at a quicker rate than we expected,” Lovallo said. “Although we released fishers in northern Pennsylvania, and they’re doing well, we believe the growing population in southwestern counties is a result of range expansion from West Virginia.”

Biologists know that fisher populations are growing and spreading within the state because they monitor legal trapping harvests, survey trappers to track incidental fisher captures and document road-kills.

The Fisher Management Plan reports that between 2001 and 2008 the number of fishers trapped incidentally rose from one to 105. The Game Commission’s Wildlife Management Unit 2C comprising mountainous Somerset, Fayette, Westmoreland, Indiana and Cambria counties accounted for nearly half of the 2008 total.

“Since we wrote that plan in 2008 the number of incidental captures has climbed to over 1,000 today,” Lovallo said.

Lovallo explained that incidental captures are fishers caught unintentionally by trappers targeting other species such as fox or raccoon, or trapped outside wildlife management units open to legal fisher trapping. Trappers are required to release these fishers unharmed if possible.

Since 2010 the Game Commission has regulated a limited trapping season (Dec. 17-28 in 2016) for fishers across 13 wildlife management units including WMUs 1B, 2C and 2D in Western Pennsylvania. Only one fisher may be taken per year and trappers must have a fisher permit.

“About 6 percent of our trappers with a fisher permit are successful. That rate has remained amazingly consistent since we started the season,” Lovallo said. “For example, [in 2015] 6,564 permit holders trapped 401 fishers in units with an open season.”

Jim Griffith, a veteran trapper from Somerset who also works as a fur receiving agent for Fur Harvesters Auction Inc. of North Bay, Ontario, has caught fishers in wide-ranging locations.

“I travel a lot buying fur and I trap in a lot of places,” Griffith said. “I’ll never forget the first thing I caught in a cable restraint in Pennsylvania was a fisher. Of course, I let it go because that was before we had a season. I carry a noose-pole and I slip the noose over one leg, stretch them out so they can’t bite and release them. Away they go.

“Being an aggressive predator, fishers are fairly easy to trap,” Griffith continued. “When the Canadians trap beaver in the remote bush they skin them on-site and take just the pelt. If a fisher gets on that beaver carcass it won’t leave it, even if it has to fight wolves.”

Griffith said signs of renewed interest in American fur from Chinese and Russian buyers, fisher pelts included, is encouraging news for local trappers and the fur market, .

“Right now, prices are as low as I’ve ever seen,” Griffith said. “But I’m optimistic and it can only go up from here. Not long ago a prime female fisher brought $200. Today, maybe $60 or $70.”

Female pelts fetch better prices than male fishers because the female’s fur is softer and silkier, Griffith explained.

Griffith’s top tip for trapping fishers?

“Use skunk scent as your lure. Fishers love it,” Griffith offered. “Around here, where you mainly find fisher is in heavy woods with hemlock or spruce where they can get red squirrels, but they have adapted well to all types of woodland.”

When asked to explain biologists’ motivation in re-introducing an opportunistic predator like the fisher, Lovallo doesn’t hesitate.

“The reality is that we had fishers in great numbers prior to the 1900s. Part of [the Game Commission’s] agency mission is to maintain and restore wildlife populations,” Lovallo reflected. “We’ve restored many such as elk, otter, eagle and beaver. Other large predators like wolves and mountain lions we’ve lost and probably never will get back, unless they do it on their own.”

Ben Moyer is a freelance writer from Farmington, Pa.

Coyotes Proliferate Despite Year-Round Hunting

By Bob Frye

There was no controversy here, deep in rural Clearfield County.

Mosquito Creek Sportsmen's Association recently held its 24th annual coyote hunt. Almost 4,000 hunters registered to compete for nearly $40,000 in prize money.

It's the oldest and biggest of the 20 or so such contests held across Pennsylvania each winter.

The hunts are not universally loved. Within the past year, hunts elsewhere spawned lawsuits, regulatory changes and protests.

But at Mosquito Creek, the mood was festive.

With an hour to go before final weigh-ins — the heaviest coyotes earn the largest cash prizes — the club parking lot was overflowing. Trucks and SUVs stretched out single-file along the entry road.

Hunters — mostly men, but a few women, too — were lined up outside the musky check station, coyotes at their feet. Many of the hunters were still dressed in their woodland and snow camo.

A young spectator with bright pink highlights in her blond hair pointed excitedly at each new coyote, saying, “I hope I get to touch one.” Little boys eating icicles played hide and seek. Families squeezed in and out of the packed clubhouse where food, drinks and souvenir hats, patches and T-shirts were being sold.

In the end, 162 coyotes — the most since 2011 — were registered.

“When you're here looking at them, that seems like a lot. But if you go by how many are probably out there, this isn't making a dent,” said club spokesman Frank Josefik. “It's a grain of sand.”

‘Maxed out everywhere'

Experts say Josefik is probably right.

Licensed hunters and trappers killed 1,810 coyotes across Pennsylvania in 1990. In 2013, the total was a record 40,956.

But coyotes are thriving, here and across the Northeast, said Tom Hardisky, a biologist with the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

“They're pretty much maxed out everywhere,” he said.

That's a testament to their versatility, said Jon Kligo, a wildlife research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station in South Carolina. They eat everything from rabbits and squirrels to insects, fruit and nuts.

They also prey on white-tailed deer fawns. They're not the only predator to do so, but they are among the best, he said.

“When it comes to predation on deer, it's really variable, depending on where you are, the predator community, whether you've got bears or bobcats, or even domestic dogs in cases,” Kligo said. “The relative importance of each species can vary.

“The one thing that's most consistent is coyotes are always at the top of the list or near the top of the list everywhere.”

A very open season

A desire by hunters to protect deer sparked a lot of the organized coyote hunts.

They're likely not accomplishing much, despite incredibly flexible rules.

Trappers in Pennsylvania can pursue coyotes for 120 days, and hunters can shoot them 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

That's unique: There's no other species for which it is legal to hunt even when adults are raising young, Hardisky said.

The same rules apply in Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia. New York and New Jersey prohibit hunting from May through September.

But no one's ever been able to significantly decrease the number of coyotes, said Duane Diefenbach, director of the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research. They're too resilient.

“They control their own destiny,” Diefenbach said.

Contests challenged ...

That has not stopped people — mostly animal welfare groups — from condemning the hunts.

In July, an Animal Legal Defense Fund lawsuit in Oregon ended an 8-year coyote hunting contest. The suit claimed the contest violated state gambling laws.

In December, Project Coyote persuaded the California Fish and Game Commission to ban coyote contests statewide.

In January, protesters in Arizona picketed a predator hunter convention. The hunters were there only because officials in their previous host city in New Mexico passed a resolution opposing organized coyote hunts.

Last month, the New Mexico state Senate approved a bill prohibiting coyote contests.

Jon Way, founder of Eastern Coyote/Coywolf Research, expects challenges to arise in more places.

Way, author of “the world's first carnivore conservation act,” which he has proposed in Massachusetts, said wildlife agencies cater almost solely to hunters, treating predators such as coyotes “like trash.”

“There's a minority of people who casually kill them, and they're basically given the green light to do whatever they want year-round,” he said. “Predator management needs to be more inclusive.”

... and defended

Dave Putnam, president of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, said he has not received any complaints about coyote hunts, nor does he expect any.

“Pennsylvania will be one of the last states to go that way, just because we have so many hunters,” Putnam said.

Adam Fabian of Ohiopyle, who runs the hunt for the Laurel Highlands Coon Hunters Club, said the contests simply mirror the growing popularity of predator hunting as a sport.

Hunts offer an opportunity for camaraderie, noted Peter Cupari of Fallowfield, who runs the Charleroi Sportsmen's Association hunt.

“It's just a good time to sit around and talk about coyotes, raffle off a few guns and have some good food and drinks,” he said.

If anything, coyote hunts have earned the animals some admiration, said Steve Miner of Grove City, who checked in three coyotes at Mosquito Creek.

“I hunt everything. But I real-ly love coyote hunting because they're smart — really one of the smartest animals I've ever seen,” he said. “That's what makes it so fun.”

Fur bearer harvests

Pennsylvania coyote harvests have been trending upward. Here's a look at how the take compared with that of other species in 2013.

Raccoon: 197,380

Muskrat: 83,880

Red fox: 61,392

Opossum: 57,138

Coyote: 40,956

Gray fox: 15,700

Beaver: 15,134

Bob Frye is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at bfrye@tribweb.com or via Twitter @bobfryeoutdoors.

Boom Days For Pennsylvania Trappers, As Higher Pelt Prices Behind Surge In Participation

By Bob Frye, Pittsburgh Tribune Review

A work station contains antique traps and new pelts at the 

Westmoreland Fur Post in Unity Twp. on January 3, 2014.

These are pretty good times to be a trapper.

The prices paid for top-quality pelts have been on the rise, with those offered last season among the highest in years. Red foxes were bringing $50 and $60 each, while raccoons were fetching up to $25 and muskrats $10 to $14.

That was pretty heady stuff by long-term standards.

“Last year was fabulous. Guys could do no wrong,” said Dorothy Butz, owner of Westmoreland Fur Post in Latrobe.

The result has been a surge in participation.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission sold 19,251 resident fur-taker licenses in 2002. In 2012, the latest year for which figures are available, it sold 38,341.

Predator hunters need a fur-taker tag to target species like bobcats and foxes, and that's grown in popularity, so that may account for some of the increase. But there's no doubt that trapping is on the rise.

“My gosh, people who haven't trapped in 30 years are getting back into it,” said Theresa Siko, owner of T&T Fur Buyers in Latrobe. “And we're seeing people who have never done it before. Interest is way up.”

Economics are the reason, said Tom Haridsky, a furbearer biologist with the commission and a trapper.

“We're really in the middle of a fur boom. This is like the third year for that, and it's because pelt prices are up,” Hardisky said.

“There are not more animals out there. But there is much more interest in getting those animals, in taking those animals. That's the story behind all this interest in trapping. It's simply pelt price. Money is a motivator.”

Species that typically bring the best prices have especially been targeted.

People pursuing coyotes — which could include hunters — grew by almost 31 percent from 2011 to 2012. The number of people chasing red foxes grew by almost 21 percent, gray foxes by 15 percent and raccoons by 12 percent.

Those increases come on top of similarly large jumps between 2010 and 2011, so there are a lot more trappers out there than even two years ago, according to commission statistics.

All of those extra people in the woods, and all of the extra “trapnights” they accounted for, have produced big harvests.

The 2012 take of raccoons — which topped 210,000 — grew by 20 percent over 2011 and was the highest seen since 1996. Last season's take of 78,000-plus opossums was up by 57 percent and the highest since 1997. Fur-takers took a record 40,109 coyotes, too.

The take of red foxes held about even at 67,465, while the take of gray foxes (17,415), beaver (9,712) and skunks (7,329) decreased compared to 2011. In virtually all of those latter cases, last season's harvest was still comparable to the long-term average and up from just two years ago, sometimes significantly.

“They're really going after things,” Siko said.

How trappers will do this season —in terms of harvest and monetary rewards — remains to be seen.

Most of the fur taken in Pennsylvania and elsewhere ends up in China, which manufactures 80 percent of the world's fur garments for export to Russia, Europe and North America, according to North American Fur Auction. Demand is driven by everything from cold weather to fashion.

Nancy Daigneault, communications director for Toronto-based North American Fur Auctions, the “oldest and largest handler of wild furs in the world,” did not return a call seeking comment. But a “fur update” from the group predicted a drop in fur prices.

“As it looks right now, there will be a reduction in price levels for most furs, but on the positive side, this will attract new consumers that were unable to buy furs because of last year's high prices,” the update reads.

Furs that are less than top quality will take the biggest hit price-wise, it said. The “trim trade,” which utilizes raccoon and coyote fur primarily, should be strong, however.

Groups like the Pennsylvania Trappers Association will begin holding local fur sales and auctions around the state throughout this month. The group's “district 3” sale, for trappers in Allegheny, Fayette, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties, for example, will be held Jan. 26 at the Washington County Fairgrounds.

North America Fur Auctions will hold the first of three international auctions Feb. 17-23.

That will go a long way toward establishing the market, Butz said. Trappers and fur buyers “will know more then” what to expect, she said.

“Every year, every season, something changes,” Siko said. “I'm sure people will want furs, as always, but it's just so hard to predict exactly what will happen.”