Hardley ever seen Critters of the North Coast.

The first two photos are Martens, the second two photos (at the bottom)are Fishers. But of course you knew that, didn’t you?

“A Fisher is a bigger, stronger, darker, and browner version of its cousin, the Marten. The Fisher has the same general long and low–slung weasel-like body shape as the Marten, but it’s larger and stockier, with thicker fur and a flatter face.”

The Marten that we have around the Eel River drainage weighs about two pounds for the female and about three pounds for the male. The fisher weighs from four to fifteen pounds and the male is up to twice as large as the female. Both the Marten and the Fisher live in, and indeed are highly dependant, on old and rotten conifer forests. Forests with lots of bugs and little scurrying critters, complete with rotting logs tender shoots and abundant food. In other words, (To steal a phrase from Bush…See he is good for something) In other words, a complete and healthy bio-system, as opposed to a clear-cut forest. It would be interesting to know how many trees could be selectively cut without interfering with the health of the complete forest. I’m sure that anyone would agree that one tree could be removed without much harm. I wonder why they don’t do studies about how many trees could be removed without harming complete biodiversity. We need a few trees to build Fred a house, but we will still need houses for the Marten and the Fishers.

The Martens tend to range in the higher elevations of the conifer forests and like to scurry around in the snow and hunt for mice and critters around the edges rocks and rotting logs, under the snow. They like to pounce from above, they actually make it look like fun. One of the things that I have noticed in most all of the photos of a Marten; the little guy always has a dirty face, with stuff stuck all over it like he just rooted up a rotten log. The Fishers like to range in the lower portions of the old growth forest down near the cricks and streams. Maybe that’s why they call them Fishers, because they live by streams, but they don’t actively fish like an Otter does. They will eat anything if they get hungry enough, they will even eat rotten fish when pressed for food. That’s what I call hungry! They have been know to eat house pets up in Canada.

The Fisher have voracious appetites, they are known to eat porcupines. They attack from underneath, and work on the nose and the belly. It takes them about a half hour to wear them out, and wound the porcupine to the point that they just roll over and give up. Then the Fisher enjoys his nice plump, high fat, high energy food.

Both the Marten and the Fisher eat Flying Squirrels, in fact they even raid their dens, The bastards! They can climb trees just like a squirrel, their hind feet turn around backwards, and they can scamper up and down trees and logs, like they were on flat ground.

The pioneers would trap Marten and Fisher for their hides. The pioneer and the Martens had a lot in common, if you were in their way, or tasted good, you were dead. I wonder what Martin stew tasted like. The pioneer was the end of the Martin and Fisher on the north coast. When the pioneers started to move cattle and sheep onto the north coast, there was a very concerted effort to eliminate any form of predator, or even the fear that their might be a predator. If an animal killed a cow or a sheep the pioneer rancher would lace the carcass with strychnine; The ranchers little helper. Strychnine killed bears, coyote, mountain lion, bobcat, marten, fisher, squirrel, rats, and mice, any thing that ate meat was dead. Even more than you know it killed Indians, and competing ranchers. Yep, strychnine the pioneers little helper. But, that’s a different story. What is important for you to know is that there was NO meat eating animals left on the north coast, except a few rats and mice, and they were held at bay. Also, ranch dogs were saved. I think that's the reason that the old breed of ranch dogs that we have here are so smart. The smart dogs, that minded good, were told to stay away from the poisened meat and they did. The dumb ones sneaked away and ate the meat anyway. Those dogs helped to prove Darwins theory.

By all accounts, the Martin and the Fisher were gone. So, if we have any here now, they came from someplace else. It causes me great wonder to think about where they might have come from. Do you think that humans would bring that kind of a critter back? If so what would be the purpose? I mean other than the fact that they are cute.

The resident expert on Mustelidea (Martins and Fishers) in southern Humboldt is “Man Who Walks in the Woods”. His friends just call him “Woods“. He showed up here with rest of the newcomers, and immediately started telling us what was wrong with the logging industry. He found many “rare and endangered plants and animals”. Being the suspicious person that I am, I went about finding out, “Who the hell this newcomer was”, and why he is so ashamed of his family. It turns out that his Name is Robert Sutherland, and his father is a PHD and a Nobel Prize winner. Okay, so that threw the “ashamed of his family” out the window, but I kept an Eye open just in case. But it turns out that he is a pretty credible and thoughtful person. But I’d bet he knows something about the re-introduction of the Marten and the Fisher. And, I would bet that he knows that the Marten and the Fisher have been a bigger killer of the flying Squirrel than the logger ever was. Why isn’t there the outcry against the Marten and fisher? What they do to forest critters is nothing short of genocide. The fact that the Marten and the Fisher could be a bigger threat than the logger to the oh-so-rare Spotted Owl doesn't seem to concern them... Huh?


Martens are from the family Mustelidae, and the genus Martes The genus first evolved up to seven million years ago, during the Pliocene period

P.S. “Why can’t we all just get along?” Rodney King

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