Fish and Wildlife Service considers fisher protections

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday it will begin a formal, one-year science review to determine whether to propose listing the Northern Rockies population of fishers under the Endangered Species Act.

The small, relatively rare mammals have been found in Western Montana and the Idaho Panhandle. Fishers are classified within the mustelid family, which also includes weasels, martens, mink and otters.

The forthcoming 12-month review of available scientific information on the species comes after several environmental groups petitioned the agency to list the fisher population last year. After the review, the agency will determine whether to propose federal protections for the population.

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Northern Rockies’ fisher population nearly disappeared in the 1920s due to unregulated trapping before rebounding in the following decades. In a 2016 press release announcing it had been petitioned to list the species, the agency noted that “new evidence suggests hunting, habitat loss and poisoning may still be concerns.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service previously determined that a proposed listing of the fisher population was not warranted. In 2011, the agency completed a 12-month review that found insufficient evidence that habitat loss and forest management posed a substantial threat to the population.

Idaho has banned fisher harvesting for more than 60 years, while Montana has a trapping season for fishers that allows an average of about seven animals to be harvested each year in the Bitterroot and Cabinet trapping districts.

Bob Inman, Montana’s carnivore and furbearer coordinator with Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said the state already has begun working on a conservation and management strategy for the species, but few records exist of its distribution in the state.

“The first step in that is determining where is it possible to have fisher populations over the long term in Montana,” Inman said Friday, adding that attempts to introduce the species in parts of the state during the ’50s and ’60s has complicated those efforts. “We don’t know if fisher were ever in those areas historically. The best models of habitat that we have kind of suggest that it would be kind of iffy.”

Fishers were documented through snowtrack surveys in Glacier National Park in the 1980s and in the Greater Yellowstone in the 1990s, but the agency has stated that it needs additional information to confirm the species’ presence. Inman said most of the Northern Rockies fisher habitat is found in Idaho, where climates and forest types are more ideally suited for the species.

The agency’s entry on fishers notes the species is most commonly found in mature coniferous and mixed coniferous-hardwood forests, and prefers riparian areas with gentle slopes and dense canopy cover, cavities and branches in trees, snags, stumps, rock piles and downed timber.

The announcement by the Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday kicks off a 30-day public comment period ending Feb. 11.

For more information or to submit comments online, visit www.regulations.gov and searching for docket number “FWS-R6-ES-2015-0104.”

Comments may also be submitted by mail to: Public Comments Processing, Attn: Docket No. FWS-R6-ES-2015-0104; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: BPHC; 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.