IT’S ALWAYS SAD to see a lost-animal poster.
Many people, myself included, can become so attached to animals that we become desperate to find them if they turn up missing.
We once had a fence-jumping cow that preferred greener pastures.
I had a hound dog that was almost always gone, or borrowed.
I had a pet skunk, but I didn’t go looking for her.
Sometimes if you lose your pet, it’s a good idea to put up a poster to let folks know you are looking for it.
So when I saw a sign at a gas station in Forks that said, “Have you seen this animal,” I looked real close at the picture.
I couldn’t remember where I had seen it before.
It was a fisher, a large member of the weasel family that has been relocated from British Columbia to Olympic National Park as part of a cooperative effort by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Park Service.
A total of 90 fishers have been reintroduced into the park during the last two winters.
Biologists, who have tracked via radio collars, believe 70 have survived.
The problem is the little devils keep getting out of the park.
You’d think the fishers would appreciate the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been spent to bring them back to this pristine environment, but apparently this crown jewel of our national park system isn’t good enough for these Canadian weasels.
The fishers don’t care if it’s a World Heritage Site and a Biosphere Reserve — some of them seem to like it outside the park.
These Canadian ingrates have scattered from Ocean Shores to Neah Bay.
Like many endangered species, the fisher is not the sharpest animal in the zoo.
How do you think they got to be endangered in the first place?
Biologically speaking, the fisher might not have evolved the look-both-ways-before-you-cross gene necessary to survive U.S. Highway 101.
They keep getting run over.
This is very sad because the fisher is a beautiful animal.
I know, because looking at the lost animal poster, I knew I had seen a fisher.
It was opening day of deer season 1985.
We were about 5,000 feet up this big bald mountain on the upper Dungeness.
The wind was blowing a hurricane. It was snowing hard, perfect for deer hunting.
We were on a knife-edge ridge looking across a large expanse of bare tundra.
We saw something move.
A large, hairy-looking weasel was bounding toward us.
It came within about 50 yards then turned and went into a patch of brush.
It was such a memorable sighting I named Weasel Mountain after it.
Since then I have heard descriptions of the fisher from other people who have seen them on the upper and lower Hoh, Dickey and Pysht rivers.
I saw another fisher in the ’90s chasing squirrels through the trees at the foot of Blue Mountain.
Which made me wonder, why didn’t the biologists put out a missing fisher sign before they spent all the money bringing new ones in?
Relocating the fishers may be a cynical manipulation of the public trust by government agencies plundering the Endangered Species Act, but it does serve as a model for the next predator release program, the wolf.
The fisher is not made for high speed, yet some of them have gotten out of the park and spread to the rest of the Peninsula.
Once the wolves are released in the park, how long do you think it will take them to get elsewhere on the Peninsula?
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Pat Neal is a North Olympic Peninsula fishing guide and humorist whose column appears every Wednesday.
Pat can be reached at 360-683-9867 or patnealwildlife@yahoo.com.
The “Pat Neal WildLife Show” is on radio KSQM 91.5 FM (www.scbradio.com) at 9 a.m. Saturdays, repeated at 6 p.m. Tuesdays.
