In today’s post, Awenda Provincial Park‘s Chief Park Naturalist Tim Tully tackles (not literally) a terrifying beast.
Pick a negative adjective and it has likely been leveled at the Fisher. There are few predators in North America which suffer from a worse reputation than this mid-sized member of the weasel family.
Fishers come with the reputation of being mean, nasty, and combative – devil-beasts with social skills that would make the Grinch look like Mr. Rogers.
Many can’t seem to resist the temptation to pass along and exaggerate a gruesome telling of a predator encounter – a tradition that likely dates back to a Stone Age campfire.
Everyone has a “did ya hear about” story about this maligned mammal. But exactly how much of the Fisher’s story has gotten away from its ecological reality?
Beware the Fishers!
A recent incident in the park prompted me to re-examine my own personal experiences with the Fisher and decipher what I have learned about this species in an unbiased attempt to separate fact from fiction.
Early this past September, a regular Awenda user came to the park office to share a Fisher sighting in the lower park. He excitedly related the story and showed us a video of his close encounter with this seldom-seen denizen of the forest.
When asked about the animal’s size, his hands quickly flared to fish tale proportions leading us to suspect it was an adult male. Male Fishers are larger, up to 3.5 feet in length compared to females which are often more than a foot smaller.
The next day we received reports of a “bounding, cat-like” animal skirting the periphery of First Beach. Was it diseased or injured?
Concerned, we went down to see for ourselves and found the Fisher in question gnawing quietly on a bone at the western edge of the beach.
Readers: rest easy
No campers were eaten during this incident.
Instead, we found a curious animal zigzagging from towel to towel with an accompanying gallery of observers punctuated by the occasional person making a hasty retreat when the Fisher ventured in their direction.
The animal in question turned out to be a young Fisher kit, likely either just weaned or orphaned from its mother. It moved awkwardly, bounding like an animated slinky while veering and dodging like a running back.
Its elastic body was no more than 20 inches in length from its button nose to the tip of its chocolate brown tail. Its oversized paws reminded me of a Golden Retriever pup waiting to grow into its body.
A killer Fisher this was not!
Searching for a snack
The young Fisher appeared to be engaged in a desperate quest. It had likely been rewarded with a handout in the recent past and was simply coming back for more.
Fishers are generalized predators and take whatever live prey they can catch including rabbits, hares, small rodents, birds and eggs, raccoons, reptiles, amphibians, and occasionally, domesticated animals.
They are particularly well adapted to hunt porcupines. Given their diet, the Fisher is definitely misnamed as they don’t actively hunt fish!
They also scavenge regularly. Fishers won’t pass up taking a dip in a dumpster, garbage can, or camper cooler to find a choice morsel. Just another reason to keep all food stored safely when camping and not feed park wildlife!
I saw the animal in question a few days later, seemingly led by its inquisitive nose and investigating what scents carried the promise of a next meal. Fishers are known to travel five kilometres in a day to meet their hyperactive energy needs.
Without further fanfare, this young Fisher disappeared into the lowland forest, nary to be seen again.
Seldom seen
Fishers are solitary and elusive animals.
They tend to be active in relatively low light at dawn and dusk but are rarely encountered by people during active daylight hours.
Of Awenda’s 150,000 annual visitors, only a handful report sightings. Most often Fisher sightings are described as seeing “a little bear.”
Male Fishers patrol 9.2 square kilometres of territory where females range over 2.3 sq. km. At six square kilometres, Awenda’s mature forest may only provide enough habitat to support a single male territory and one mated pair.
In the three decades I have worked at the park, I have seen fewer than five live Fishers. Typically, I catch a 2-3 second glimpse of a low profile animal bee-lining across a park road.
In reality, I spend much more of my time talking to people about Fishers than entertaining actual sighting reports.
Addressing the cat rumours
Fishers are opportunistic hunters, and — if presented with a safe opportunity to do so — they can make a meal of a domesticated feline.
Let us temper any conclusions, and what has threatened to morph into full blown Fisher hysteria, with a Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF) study from January 2000.
The stomach contents of twenty-five Fishers were analyzed, and although the study showed some interesting food items (deer carrion, raccoon, snake, and even other Fishers), the results revealed that no cats were on the menu.
In another study, only one in one thousand Fishers actually had cat remains in their stomachs. The more likely cat predators are Great-horned Owl, Coyote, or Red Fox.
It appears that there has been a miscarriage of natural justice – a guilty verdict without substantial scientific evidence!
However, this is a good time to remind you that even though the likelihood of your pet being a Fisher’s next meal is extremely low, please remember to keep your pet leashed while in parks (yes, dogs and cats!).
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a…
Now let’s get down to the brass tacks and flying fishers. There is a persistent story that the MNRF abetted the explosion of the Fisher population in southern Ontario by airlifting a legion of animals into areas where they previously didn’t exist.
The origins of this rumour likely stem from the introduction of Fishers over thirty years ago in the United States where they were reintroduced from Ontario to control superabundant porcupine populations.
In Ontario, small numbers of Fishers were reintroduced in the Parry Sound area (1957-63) and to Manitoulin Island and the Bruce Peninsula (1979-82).
The local Fisher populations in those areas were nearly eliminated by habitat loss, intentional poisoning, and trapping pressure which intensified in the 1920s.
The reintroduced fishers were transplanted from a healthier population in Algonquin Provincial Park.
Results from local DNA analysis showed the animals that persisted were unrelated and likely had local genetic origins. A recent study examined the reintroduction statistics and found 16 of 30 North American Fisher reintroductions (47%) failed to establish viable populations.
Southern Ontario is part of the Fisher’s historic range. They prefer mixed mature forests with large standing cavity trees, dense undergrowth, and a mix of woodland, wetlands and open fields.
The reason for their population rebound is much simpler than the exotic airlift.
Fisher pelt prices collapsed from $400 dollars in the 1980s to recent rates of $30 to $40 per pelt. Fewer trappers maintain traplines in southern regions and mature forest habitat has slowly rebounded from the 1950s when Fishers were scarce.
A happy sight
We are fortunate that Fishers have made such a successful comeback in southern Ontario without the need of human intervention.
In Awenda, they are an important predator within the ecosystem and act as a major control of rodent populations (not to mention filling the valuable role of ecological street cleaners!)
The next time you see a Fisher, don’t point an accusatory finger and indulge the popular fictions.
Instead reach for the scientific facts and enjoy the chance to see a rare and unusual predator with an opportunistic appetite!