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Despite its name, the Pacific fisher doesn’t eat fish or live by the ocean. In fact, this shy, plush-furred member of the weasel family inhabits lower-elevation, closed-canopy forests and munches on everything from birds to small mammals to fruit. The fisher is the only animal tough and clever enough to prey regularly on porcupines — no easy feat. But thanks to historical trapping and extensive logging and development in the West Coast’s mature and old-growth forests, the Pacific fisher is now in immediate danger of extinction.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Not listed; candidate species
PETITIONED: 2000, 2007 (California Endangered Species Act only)
YEAR PLACED ON LIST: Candidate 2004
RANGE: Northern California and the southern Sierra Nevada; reintroduced population in the southern Oregon Cascades
THREATS: Habitat fragmentation due to logging and development
POPULATION TREND: Only three small, isolated populations of the Pacific fisher remain; one of those is the result of reintroduction efforts.
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SAVING THE PACIFIC FISHER
A combination of logging, historic trapping for fur, and other factors has led to a severe contraction of the fisher’s range across the United States and Canada. Thankfully, the species recovered much of its range in the eastern United States through trapping regulations, the return of abandoned farmlands to forest, and reintroductions. But the Pacific fisher — the fisher of the West Coast — hasn’t been nearly so fortunate.
Although trapping of the Pacific fisher has been outlawed since the 1940s, logging and development have decimated the large, contiguous blocks of forest the species needs to thrive: today, as little as 15 percent remains of old-growth forests in California, Oregon, and Washington. And because the fisher doesn’t fly or live in the water, its recovery requirements aren’t sufficiently addressed by current management plans like the Northwest Forest Plan, which was designed primarily to benefit the spotted owl, marbled murrelet, and salmon.
To help save the Pacific fisher from extinction, the Center and 17 other environmental groups filed a petition to list the species as federally endangered in 2000. It took four years for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to decide that listing was “warranted but precluded” and put the Pacific fisher on the candidate list to await protection indefinitely. But the Center will continue to advocate for this and other species that depend on West Coast old-growth forests to survive. In 2007, we published Species of Concern in the Tillamook Rainforest and North Coast, Oregon, a report documenting the status of more than 200 imperiled species in the Tillamook and North Coast; it showed that the Pacific fisher had been eliminated from the area. And in 2008, we filed a petition to list the fisher as threatened or endangered under the California Endangered Species Act, which could alter forest management on millions of acres of private forest land across the state. Habitat for the species must be protected in the remaining portions of its range if the Pacific fisher is to recover.
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Contact: Noah Greenwald
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