Hudson Valley Fishers 01. OCT, 2012 CATEGORIES: SMALL MAMALS BY DICK HENRY 0 COMMENTS I worked on the Catskill Fisher Reintroduction program back in the mid 70′s. It was funded by the 1976 license fee increase along with several other initiatives intend to enhance sportsman’s interests. Fisher were a valuable furbearer in that era, and had been pretty much eliminated from the Catskills when the tanning/hemlock industry used up much of the hemlock forests in the previous century.DEC paid higher than pelt value to Adirondack trappers to live capture and sell them to the Department. That was when fur prices were at an all time high and the going rate for a male fisher was somewher around $240 per fisher to a fur trapper. Big bucks in those days.A total of 43 fisher were brought down and released from about 1976 thru 1978. There were two release sites : Slide Mountain (heart of the Catskills) and the Shawangunk Ridge (Mohonk Preserve and Minnewaska Park). In 1979 we began winter track surveys to document the presence of fisher. They have very distinctive, 5-toed tracks and have a loping 2×2 gait in snow. About 1981 there numbers began to increase dramatically. Fisher have a unique reproductive cycle; they give birth around the first of April and breed again within two or three weeks. The fertilized embryos don’t implant and begin to develop until the next fall. It appears that fisher need to be dense enough for females to be bred within a 24 hour period away from the den , otherwise the kits die from not being nursed in a timely manner. Litter size is 3 to 4 kits. Once the females are quickly bred, populations begin to increase dramatically because of better kit survival.In the fall of 1983, fur trapper Bill Smith from Napanoch caught a large male fisher and brought to us in a small holding cage. We tranquilized it, pulled a small tooth and confirmed that this was indeed a Catskill bred and born fisher. In 1985, we opened an experimental fisher season (with a season bag limit of 1) in the Catkills; Bill Smith caught the first legally trapped Catskill fisher in 100 years. A total of 6 or 7 were caught that year, and fisher takes increased incrementaly until the early 1990′s when the bag limit was eliminated.Through 1990, successful Catskill fisher trappers were required to turn in the skinned carcasses for evaluation. About a third of them had evidence of porcupine quills in the face and neck area, but seemed unbothered by them. Stomach contents were interesting: they eat damn near anything. Small mammals, birds, snakes, chickens, frogs, even skunk remains all turned up in fall fisher stomach contents.Fisher today appear to be no longer limited to the coniferous forest habitat. They’re found down through Dutchess and Putnam Counties east of the Hudson and as far south as Rockland County on the west side. DEC has lost all of the records of the Catskill Fisher Reintroduction, but somewhere in my personal files I have a copy of the final Fisher Report from 1989. Leave a Reply NAME (REQUIRED) MAIL (REQUIRED)
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 10:34:20 +0000
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