PORT ANGELES — An overflow crowd showed up Tuesday night at Olympic National Park’s Visitor Center to learn about fishers and their possible reintroduction to the park.
Most in attendance listened to biologist Jeff Lewis of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, who hosted the program on the small member of the weasel family.
Lewis talked about what they are, where and how they live and the plan for reintroducing them to Olympic National Park.
Lewis also was the lead author of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife’s feasibility assessment for reintroducing the species into Washington state.
He was joined by Patti Happe, wildlife branch chief for Olympic National Park.
Fishers weigh between 4.5 and 12 pounds and are between 2.5 and 3.5 feet long, about a third of which is their long, bushy tails.
Fifth-largest of weasels
Lewis said they are the fifth-largest member of the North American weasel family after sea otters, river otters, wolverines and badgers.
They prey on snowshoe hares, deer mice, rats and mice, squirrels, shrew, deer and elk carrion, and birds, as well as porcupines and mountain beavers.
Fishers are really effective on porcupines, which are hard on bark, so they are favored by foresters in many states, he said.
Happe said the animals are smaller than coyotes so they potentially could hunt house cats or chickens.
But human interaction is not an issue in the West because the animal’s old-growth forest habitats are too remote, she said.
Lewis said fishers live in low to mid-level old growth forests, which contain a lot of snags, downed logs and trees with large nesting areas.
Areas for reintroduction
The three best areas for reintroduction, based upon population, prey and habitat, are Olympic National Park, the northwestern Cascades and the southwestern Cascades, in that order, he said.
The Olympic Peninsula has the greatest amount of suitable habitat on public land, the greatest concentration of suitable habitat and the greatest carrying capacity, Lewis said.
The best habitats are in the river drainages of the Elwha, Sol Duc, Bogachiel, Hoh, Queets and Quinault.
