Searching for Fisher Habitat in the Cariboos

This summer I spent a week traveling through central British Columbia’s Cariboo region searching for signs of fisher (Martes pennanti) and learning about why fisher populations appear to be disappearing from across much of the region. This trip was the start of field work for Echo Conservation’s Fisher Project funded through a grant from Y2Y Conservation Initiative. 

It turns out industrial logging as it is currently carried out in British Columbia poses major challenges to fishers who depend on older trees for refuge and denning habitat and complicated woody structures on the forest floor as thermal refuge and areas to hunt in the winter under the snow pack. Clearcuts remove all of this from the landscape making vast areas unusable for these creatures and fragmenting remaining forest habitat.

In the months that come we will be carrying out interviews with biologists, stakeholders, and managers along with setting camera traps to get a behind the scenes view into the lives of these fascinating little carnivores!

Pulp and lumber mills in Quesnel receive trees from forestry activity in the Cariboo region that’s threatening the survival of fishers.

Growths such as this in a spruce tree are important habitat features for fishers who use them for nests and hunting perches.

Fisher researcher Larry Davis inspects an artificial den box for fisher he set up in an attempt to deal with the lack of old trees large enough to have natural cavities for fishers to use. Fisher are the largest mammal in North America that requires a tree cavity for reproduction.

Complex forest structure typical of quality fisher habitat.

Contiguous stands of mature forest are ideal habitat for fishers, such as these stands in Schoolhouse Lake provincial park.

Unfortunately, more and more of the region looks like this, fragmented stands of recently cut forest as well as early regeneration forest -- a landscape fishers can’t thrive in.