Fisher decline

When I was a kid, I owned just about every Golden Guide that was available.  Used to carry them around in my back pocket while I scoured the North Florida woods near my home.  I valued them for what they could tell me about the species I encountered, but I was just as fascinated by the ones that came from faraway locales that I could only imagine.  I remember being fascinated by the subarctic weasels like martens and fishers.  I still have a mental image of their depiction of a fisher, standing alertly on a spruce limb with its squirrel prey.

So, it's a little depressing to read that fishers (at least those in California) are in serious decline.  A study conducted by the Hoopa Valley Tribe and the University of Massachusetts shows that, between 1998 and 2005, fisher numbers went down almost 80% on the Hoopa reservation in northwestern California.  A number of factors may be at work, including habitat destruction, disease, and bobcat predation.