OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — About a dozen furry fishers will be let loose in Olympic National Park over this weekend as the final chapter in the effort to revitalize the population on the North Olympic Peninsula.
The exact number of the weasel-like animals to be released is not certain because each is still being evaluated for its health, park spokeswoman Barb Maynes said Tuesday.
“We are anticipating releasing some in the Elwha area and some on the west side of the park,” Maynes said.
Three years ago, the park set out to release 100 of the animals into the park.
“We will be very, very close to that goal,” Maynes said.
Of the 77 released so far, 22 are still being monitored on radio collars and three have been confirmed to have given birth, Maynes said.
Fishers are related to minks, otters and martens, and are native to the forests of Washington state, including the North Olympic Peninsula.
Overtrapping and habitat loss in the late 1800s and early 1900s led to their extinction in the state.
Known in British Columbia for attacks on porcupines, fishers have to make do with other prey in the Olympics, which lack porcupines. They eat snowshoe hares, deer mice, rats and mice, squirrels, shrew, deer and elk carrion, and birds.
Fisher reintroduction to the park was done through a partnership of agencies and organizations.
The state Department of Fish and Wildlife and Olympic National Park are joint project managers, and along with the U.S. Geological Survey are leading a research and monitoring program to evaluate the success of the reintroduction.
Ten other groups have also contributed to the effort to capture the animals in British Columbia and bring them to the Peninsula.
Those organizations are the British Columbia Ministry of Environment, British Columbia Trappers Association, Conservation Northwest, Doris Duke Foundation, Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, Washington Department of Natural Resources, Washington’s National Park Fund and Wildlife Conservation Society.
The cost of obtaining, transporting, releasing and monitoring fishers over three years was estimated at about $200,000 a year.
As the fisher population grows, biologists hope to fill habitat gaps in other areas of the state.
Fishers were listed as a state-endangered species in 1998 by the state Fish and Wildlife Commission and were designated as a candidate for federal listing in 2004 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
