Photos courtesy of WTIP Top: Reporter Barbara Jean Johnson had the opportunity to hold a pine marten while it was sedated. Above left: Jeff Wilson, of the Wisconsin DNR, observes a trapped marten. Above right: Wilson and colleague Dan Haskell check to see if they captured a female marten.
Pine Martens are members of the weasel family. They weigh around two or three pounds and look a bit like a ferret. In Northeastern Minnesota there is an abundance of them, but across the lake in Wisconsin they have been virtually wiped out. Wisconsin DNR biologists Dan Haskell and Jeff Wilson spent ten days in Cook County looking for martens to bring back to Wisconsin where the animal has been extirpated. According to Haskell extirpated means “the animal locally has been removed or is no longer present.”
Haskell and Wilson came to Minnesota to do something about the extirpation of the marten in Wisconsin. They’re here as part of a three-year cooperative effort between Minnesota and Wisconsin agencies to reintroduce the marten to Wisconsin by taking some from Minnesota and relocating them in northern Wisconsin.
According to Wilson, a combination of things over the last century led to the animals’ decline, beginning with early European settlement. First pine tress were over-harvested, then with the expansion of the railroad the forest hardwoods were hauled out, and while all that was happening huge forest fires swept through the area further reducing marten habitat.
During the great depression, the population of martens was reduced even further. Wilson said massive habitat changes, in combination with the high value on marten pelts during the depression, spelled disaster for the Wisconsin marten. He said, “Many farmers and farm boys fed their families off their trap lines, and given the lack of regulations and the high value on pelts, I don’t doubt that they were over-harvested.”
Haskell and Wilson believe the marten can make a comeback in Wisconsin and they have some evidence to back that up. The fisher, also a member of the weasel family, was successfully reintroduced to Wisconsin in the 60s by the same method and today it is abundant. The state has even established a fisher trapping season. Now they’ve set out to do the same with the pine marten.
Haskell and Wilson are looking for 35 martens to bring back to Wisconsin, but they’re not always easy to catch. Wilson said, “When we set a cage trap to capture an American marten we put beaver bait in the back of the trap and then outside up high we put out what is called a call lure and that’s to draw them in.”
The lure they hang in the trees smells strongly of skunk. Wilson said they get some funny looks from people when they hit the grocery stores after a day of trapping. “We’re sure that people are noticing us,” he cracked with a smile and a laugh.
Checking the trap line takes hours as they are hidden in the woods off the back roads. Haskell said he enjoys the challenge of figuring out how the animal operates. “I guess when I’m out like trying to trap the animal, I get a good feeling where I can think like the animal,” he said, adding, “Sometimes you have this gut feeling about where you’re going to catch one. Thenwhen you do it’s like ‘Okay, I’ve figured out how this animal operates’.”
Toward the end of their ten-day expedition the search is all about finding females as they already have all the male martens needed to fill their quota. But females aren’t as easy to catch as male martens are. Haskell and Wilson think it’s because females cover less ground on a day-to-day basis.
“My wife says it’s because they are smarter,” joked Wilson, “but I think it’s because they have a much smaller home range—maybe a half a mile to a mile.”
In contrast, males cover around two to three miles. From this Wilson concluded, “If you set a trap line and spread it out, there’s going to be about two or three times more possibility of a male capture than a female capture.”
On the last day of their trip the pressure to capture another female was on. After checking traps for a few hours and releasing five trapped males, they finally captured a female marten. The procedure to confirm the animal’s sex seems a bit dangerous. Wilson coaxes the marten into a laundry sack, working it in to the corner of the bag. He then puts a tight hold on its head while Haskell peels back the bag to get a look at its genitalia.
Once they know for certain that they’ve captured a female they sedate her and run through a series of basic tests to collect data. They check her temperature, get her weight, take measurements and insert a small electronic marking tag under her fur. Thatway, if they run across her in the future, they’ll be able to identify her.
They also give each animal they take home a name, and because I’m the lucky guest of honor that day, they dubbed her Barbara.
There are aspects of this job that are hard for Haskell and Wilson, like being away from home for extended periods of time. But all in all, they both enjoy what they do and find meaning in their work. As Wilson put it, “When I look at the impact that humans have had on this earth in this region and we can look back and see how we mismanaged our forests, our wildlife and that’s why this animal and others were extirpated—and now when I see this cooperative project, it seems we’ve learned from our mistakes. Now scientists can work together and move forward and we can restore what we’ve mismanaged in the past and it’s inspirational for me to see. This animal is a really important part of biological diversity and I’m really happy I can participate in that.”
It’s year two of the three-year relocation project and Wilson and Haskell headed back to Wisconsin with the captured martens. If all goes well they’ll be back next year to collect another batch of martens for relocation in Wisconsin.
This story comes to the Cook County
News-Herald courtesy of our news partners
WTIP Community Radio. For more
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