SAVING THE PACIFIC FISHER

Despite its name, the Pacific fisher doesn’t eat fish or live by the ocean. In fact, this shy, plush-furred member of the weasel family inhabits lower-elevation, closed-canopy forests and munches on everything from birds to small mammals to fruit. The fisher is the only animal tough and clever enough to prey regularly on porcupines — no easy feat. But thanks to historical trapping and extensive logging and development in the West Coast’s mature and old-growth forests, the Pacific fisher is now in danger of extinction.

Although Pacific fisher trapping was outlawed in the 1940s, logging and development have decimated the large blocks of forest the species needs to thrive. And because the fisher doesn’t fly or live in the water, its recovery requirements aren’t sufficiently addressed by management plans like the Northwest Forest Plan, designed primarily to benefit the spotted owl, marbled murrelet, and salmon.

To help save the Pacific fisher from extinction, the Center and 17 other environmental groups petitioned to list the species as federally endangered in 2000. It took four years for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to decide that listing was “warranted but precluded” and put the Pacific fisher on the candidate list to await protection indefinitely. Thanks to a Center petition, the fisher is also a candidate for protection under the California Endangered Species Act. The Center continues to advocate for this and other species that depend on West Coast old-growth forests to survive. In 2007, we published Species of Concern in the Tillamook Rainforest and North Coast, Oregon, a report documenting the status of more than 200 imperiled species in the Tillamook and North Coast; it showed that the Pacific fisher had been eliminated from the area. And in 2008, we filed a petition to list the fisher as threatened or endangered under the California Endangered Species Act, which could alter forest management on millions of acres of private forest land.