California:Forest Management for Fishers done Hoopa style

The Hoopa Valley tribe’s primary source of income is timber
harvesting. Internationally recognized by the United Nations and the
Forest Stewardship Council as a model for community-based, sustainable
forestry, the tribe wanted to be sure their harvesting did not harm
the fisher. In the steeply cleaved, fog-shrouded mountains of
California’s northern Coast Range, there are few people, more than a
little mystery and tales of strange, seldom-seen beasties. The
venerable groves of Redwood National Park lie midway between Eureka
and the state border. To the east of the park, the truly wild country
of the Hoopa Valley tribe’s reservation provides refuge to endangered
marbled murrelets and spotted owls, ringtail cats, Pacific giant
salamanders (a stout creature that some say actually barks) and all
manner of other natural remnants of the world that greeted the arrival
of Europeans.

Cuddly weasel cousin None of the reservation’s denizens
is more exotic, and perhaps more threatened, than the photogenic
Pacific fisher (they’re usually anesthetized when photographed) a
hyperactive cousin of weasels and wolverines.Imagine an elongated,
stubby-legged, dark brown to black house cat with an attitude that
makes the Tasmanian devil seem like a cherub. Fishers are snarly –
really snarly. The Pacific fisher may seem less than lovable, but the
Hupa Indians consider the fisher a culturally significant part of
their world and want to ensure that it survives.Other than mating,
which happens in April, adult male and female fishers have little to
do with each other. Fishers favor dense old-growth or mature conifer
forests with a fair number of rotting or hollow trees for dens.
Fishers live and hunt much of the time in the trees. They are amazing
climbers with unique ankle joints (also found in squirrels) that allow
their hind feet to rotate nearly 180 degrees so they can climb down a
tree headfirst. When not peripatetically preoccupied with finding
food, fishers hole up in tree hollows, usually well off the ground.
That means their forest home has to be old-growth or mature with
rotting trees. Harvesting a forest for lumber destroys the fisher’s
habitat.Ferocious as the fisher is, it also has what fur-coat makers
consider a premier pelt, sometimes called the North American sable. At
the turn of the past century, fur trapping had brought the fisher to
the brink of extinction. Though fishers were never common, they once
ranged through most of the Coastal Mountains down into Marin County
and through the Sierra into Kern County. Today there are two small
California populations: one south of Yosemite and one along the
Klamath River in the northern part of the Hoopa Valley Tribe
Reservation. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/12/HOD214EG6T.DTL

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