U.S. Fish and Wildlife Denies Protections for Imperiled Pacific Fisher, Says EPIC
Pacific Fisher National Parks Service
Press release from the Environmental Protection Information Center:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has denied listing for the Northern California/Southern Oregon population of Pacific fishers.
Fishers are relatives of mink, otters, and martens. Fishers once roamed West Coast forests from Southern California through British Colubmia, however trapping and habitat destruction have reduced the species to two native populations: one in Southern Oregon/Northern California one in the Southern Sierra Nevada mountains.
Conservation groups including EPIC, the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center and the Center for Biological Diversity first petitioned to list the species in 2000. Consideration of that petition has been repeatedly stalled, with the agency repeatedly evading its responsibilities under the law, forcing litigation by conservation groups.
Following the 2000 listing petition, conservation groups sued the Service to force a determination. In 2004, the Service found that listing was warranted but precluded by higher-priority activities. Following inaction by the Service, in 2010 conservation groups again sued the Service to force the government to complete a final decision. In 2014, the Service returned with a draft decision to list the species. Curiously, two years later the Service reversed its decision, finding that listing was not warranted. Conservation groups again sued and won, with a judge ordering the agency to try again. In 2020, the Service split the larger species into two smaller populations, listing one (Southern Sierra population) as threatened while denying protections to the other (Northern California/Southern Oregon). This decision was, again, overturned, with a settlement to re-consider listing.
“It’s clear that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is doing its best to stop the listing of the Pacific fisher,” said Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Information Center. “The law, however, requires that science drive decisions, not the whims and wishes of the timber industry.”
The Pacific Fisher is under threat from numerous stressors, each compounding the effects of the other: climate change, including larger and more severe wildfires; rodenticide exposure; logging of the mature forest habitats required by the species; and enhanced predation from changes to forest ecosystems.
“This reckless decision ignores the recommendations of professional wildlife biologists,” said KS Wild’s Conservation Director George Sexton. “Widespread use of toxic rodenticide poisons has Fishers dropping dead across the landscape and the Trump Administration just doesn’t seem to care.”
“Fishers are emblems of the Pacific Northwest’s wild forests, and we have to help them avoid extinction and persevere for future generations,” said Tierra Curry, senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’ll keep working to protect these carnivores and the special places they live.”
Pacific Fisher National Parks Service
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The Obama and Biden administrations had 12 years to OK this. But yet its all Trumps fault?
“Widespread use of toxic rodenticide poisons has Fishers dropping dead across the landscape and the Trump Administration just doesn’t seem to care.”
Yeah, those damn loggers using all that rodenticide, and that damn Trump not caring. (sarcasm)
The Golden Goose Industry, marijuana, is all but dead and they are not going to be able to compete with the legal southern California Marijuana mega grows. So the rodenticide use should die out. Along with the rest of us.
“The population of Pacific fishers in Northern California and Southern Oregon is estimated to be between 2,500 and 4,000 individuals”. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deemed this to be a surviving population.
According to the USFWS, the best available scientific information suggests the NCSO fisher population is “overall stable”. The agency’s assessment found that the population, estimated between 2,500 and 4,000 individuals, is not currently in danger of extinction.
https://www.google.com/search?q=why+did+the++U.S.+Fish+and+Wildlife+Service+not+list+the+pacific+fisher+as+an+endangered+species&sca_esv=b62a81363822e03c&sxsrf=AE3TifPMamDs2PWp9c6H4bkItr17I4TpAw%3A1756306468788&source=hp&ei=JByvaKzeLZn3kPIP6uSpyQo&iflsig=AOw8s4IAAAAAaK8qNPpOxGU0BnH3MXgrNBETkQ4oUgkN&aep=22&udm=50&ved=0ahUKEwisgL-5n6uPAxWZO0QIHWpyKqkQteYPCBM&mtid=6RyvaOn8GofZ0PEPn4jI4Qw&mstk=AUtExfA-n_Kq1w0AFveifwzhpSvVY39KNszY_Zher7GH8zIY4-_SWbeEyug6vXO01ae7myE-mS1SHYggDhFyg4eltnGqZLzbLXDGAoxXdJFWhiwTXq1O6X1Cydz1bD0PhZkA3rUjRu2iMRZjx8Yy1nS4iLi7DtdnvWqxRUUhSt45NqZmvhcaHwnDVZ5YtujW6qpQozgG4pd_LQrmiNf_osFnKkxEknCceSRivVrVqDhcII2oLljghfK7aNaNc_y8Uo-72unjB8T2lD1OlL5IE2XyVoZpW0x_-mMkgFA&csuir=1
The Environmental Protection Information Center is another one of those organizations that sprang up during the marijuana boom to save the growers from the timber companies that were spraying the outlaw marijuana grows on their timberlands with broadleaf killer.
And, like a rebel without a cause they keep trying to justify their existence.
So you understand one side of the issue. Do you understand the other side?
Probably better than most.
Maybe you could give me a primmer.
No one is claiming that it is loggers using rodenticide.
That was clearly sarcasm, everybody knows that it was the marijuana industry that was using rodenticides. Do you get the Irony now?
Just the commenter lol. I don’t know of a single logger or logging company that uses rodenticides for anything. I do believe that the large fires and illegal marijuana cultivation has a much greater impact on the fisher population. There will come a time when these animals will not survive. Just like all the creatures that have passed since the beginning of time. It is sad when we lose animals that most people love.
Especially the tyrantasuarus Rex.
LOL!!!
Wow this Corn Moon sure seem to have affected everybody. 🙂
Yep, he is one nasty critter!
Examine the maxxam savings and loan scam hurowitz (sp?) pulled and then know that planning to end a thing economically has unintended consequences, the Texas two step the oil platforms pull is example. The industry won’t just vanish it will degenerate and extract all it can. This is the nature of globalism and resource extraction. The china based neurotoxins have been since tbe locals fully left the mom and pop scene and quality became a thing of the past snd it was wall about cheap weed. Thanks socal, here habe the rest of our water.
So, Ern’, most of the local pot growers used rodenticide (I did not) but the big SoCal mega-growers won’t have to. Why not? Any ideas about why the “legal southern California Marijuana mega grows” will succeed while those up here won’t? What’s the difference? One possible difference is they won’t have you and your compadres cheering their demise, chortling about reports of potheads getting cancer, going broke, and spreading rodenticide hither and yon.
People I allied with used coffee cans on their side with a rat trap and whole peanut for bait. The sheltered trap did not draw birds and whole peanuts did not expel as much scent to draw deer to your fenced garden. I also did not kill rattlesnakes which helped immensely. Have to be alert and careful, like, you know, in nature and stuff.
But if your evil stereotype feels good and eases your day, go ‘head on it. I was just thinking about the magnificent Eel River, one of the most erosive watersheds in N. America, a renowned, productive salmonid nursery. Too bad it was destroyed by evil, Euro-American invaders, bulldozing endless roads across streambeds, up and down the spawning beds, Eliminating Tribes, trees, wildlife with contempt and disdain. Wow, Ernie, I’m loving this hate!
Wow, nice conflation. Thank you for being a responsible grower. There were more responsible loggers than you give credit. But, just like the marijuana trade the good got hurt with the bad.
I was in lock step in the growers hate of Hurowitz and Maxam. They were a bunch of unscrupulous bastards.
A lot of the small contract Jyppo loggers would buy timber from the ranchers, Harvest the logs them sell them to a mill. Then pay the rancher for the stumpage. Believe me, the rancher would tell the Jyppo where the roads would go which places and water to stay away from. All-in all a clean operation.
Then the corporate timber companies moved in. They bought the ranchers timber rights and paid more than the Jyppos could pay. They bought all the ranchers timber in one lump sum, paid up front and bought the rights to log later.
Then once they controlled the log supply, they drove the lumber market sky high. When it came time to log, they took the logs down the creeks or the fastest way that they could get them to the mill. When the rancher would complain they would tell them “We bought your rights. Talk to our lawyers”.
Please don’t pretend that the marijuana trade was clean and wonderful, they had just as many, or more, “Unscrupulous bastards” as the timber industry.
So-Cal growers = economy of scale. Out-grow them if you can… good luck.
As to the loggers ruining “the magnificent Eel River”… If you didn’t see the October 12th 1962 windstorm, or the 1955 or 1964 flood, you are just talking out your ass!
We have a lot in common, you and I, and we do get a little pissed-off with each other from time to time. We seem to share an “evil stereotype”.
In twenty years or so people will look back and find that Marijuana was not all that wonderful, any more than the timber industry was.
It is too bad that not many people will read either of our comments, they probably are tired of us.
Hang in there.
Ernie
While the Northern California–Southern Oregon fisher population may appear stable at present (there is documented evidence of decline in some areas) it faces serious, well-documented threats that could drive rapid decline in the near future.
increasing megafires that destroy habitat and directly kill fishers, widespread poisoning from rodenticides associated with marijuana cultivation, continued logging and fragmentation of mature forests, and the small, genetically vulnerable size of certain subpopulations.
These factors matter because stability today does not guarantee security tomorrow; ignoring the evidence of decline and known threats risks waiting until the population is already collapsing before action is taken, at which point recovery becomes far more difficult and uncertain.
Maybe if the U.S. Forest Service could put out a few fires, instead of “managing” them it would help. It would save wildlife habitat and sequester carbon.
There is enough fault to go around. We need to get a clue and start dealing with things in a realistic fashion. We need to forget about “which side” we think we are on and start dealing with reality.
It makes more sense to harvest timber than let it burn. Harvested timber retains its carbon sequestration. and builds housing.
Harvested timber could be managed more properly. Timber prices could come down with more forestland available for harvesting, instead of burning.
Somebody recently said “Oh, quit making sense!”
Every dead species is one less before humans make the list….so rejoice.
EPIC is nothing more than a group of inviro lawyers that file suit on everything they can and then use the stooges to make all the noise while they collect the checks.
Thankfully, courts no longer have any power or effect. No one listens to them. Guess epic is out of business.
These critters are all over the place.
Small, they blend in well with the terrain.
They are usually ‘invisible’… (except when they cross roads).
Diet is like a small bear… except they take smaller prey. (Squirrels, Birds, Frogs, Carrion.)
Bear > Wolverine > Badger > Fisher/Mink. (Typical er… ‘bear-like’ critters.)
Bears common.
Badgers are really rare on the coastal mountains.
Wolverines… extremely (like massively) rare here.
Fishers are common (except rarely seen).
I did see a Wolverine… long (long) ago, way up on Snow Camp Road. (When it was open.)
Looked at me and headed off in the brush. May have been a ‘once in a lifetime’ view.
Back in the late ’60s I was driving on the old stagecoach road just north of Old Harris. I saw the ground all torn up around a ground squirrel warren.
I stopped the truck, curious about what could have caused such a big pile of dirt in the middle of it. I jumped over the fence, being careful not to damage it. I walked over to it, about twenty feet, and looked down into the rather large “squirrel hole.”
As I looked down the hole, the most horrible loud growl/snarl vicious roar came out of the hole into my face. I headed back to the truck as fast as I could run jump and leap. Not being careful of anything. I believe it was a badger. It stayed in its place and I returned to mine.
A rancher gave me a dead badger once that I intended to skin and tan the hide. It was in my freezer for a couple of years and my wife convinced me to get rid of it. Women have no sense of priorities.
Hey Bozo
Thanks for making it clear that you have no idea what a bear diet is. Bears of any size, papa bear, mama bear, baby bear DO NOT TAKE ANY PREY!
LOL nope none zero zilchnada because our california blackbears are “Omnivorous opportunistic scavengers”.
When the salmon were abundant then Yes bears did their best to grab them. However standing in a river or stream grabbing a salmon is debateable whether its technically hunting or opportunistic scavenging.
Have a nice day!
That’s not exactly true, bears are opportunistic omnivores-predators taking advantage of food sources when they find them. They are well known for preying on fawns, ground squirrels, and many others live prey when they have the chance.
Thank you!
Bear “diet” is practically anything! 🙂 A local who got into a supply of ethanol could be heard down the canyon drunken and loudly moaning/”singing” for hours. He was back the next day, probably with a hangover.
This time of year I suspect a BIG hungry male would chase down a deer in an instant given the opportunity.
They certainly ate every one of my chickens after tearing apart my coop. That’d be 12 in a night. They eat the the neighborhood trash that the flatlanders are too lazy to secure. Bears will eat just about anything.
Eh ? Wow… I wonder what they use the canine teeth for ?
Weird eh ?
Saw one above Honeydew Creek once, I think, climbing through the dense huckleberry brush. Native local Larry Smith told me it was probably a Fisher or a Mink.
When my mother was a kid, Laytonville 1920’s. She said weasels would get into the chicken house and suck chickens.
She said that the only clue was to find a dead chicken with a hole in its neck. They would lick up all the blood.
Don’t know for sure what animal it was. Back then any weaselly thing was a “weasel”.
I’m good with this. They are elusive but present. They got my rooster last christmas eve. I do however want a reintroduction of porcupines. Poisoned out of existance by SPI and other logging companies. My family has a family of them who visit in N. Utah. The videos they send are great. My neighbor in Trinity says they were awful tasty too.