By Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is conducting research on fisher, a forest-dwelling carnivore that once occupied forests across the Cascade and Klamath-Siskiyou regions.
Today, Oregon’s remaining fisher persist as a small, isolated population in the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains. And ODFW researchers want to know how fisher use available habitat and what interactions they have with other carnivores.
Keifer Titus leads ODFW’s Western Oregon research team. He says that research began with hair snare surveys in 2018 and pivoted to trapping and GPS collaring in late 2022. To date, 40 fisher have been collared to learn their movement patterns, habitat selection, and space use.
“We wanted to know these things so we could better understand what is limiting fisher recovery. By knowing where and when they move, what type of habitat they prefer, and how they use those spaces, we can help inform land management decisions,” Titus said. “We expanded the study in 2023 to include gray foxes to see if competition between the two animals is negatively affecting fisher. But that’s likely not the case – we found the two animals largely avoid each other by separating their space and active time of day.”
Late last year, researchers began GPS-collaring bobcats, a larger carnivore known to prey on fisher in other portions of their range. By tracking bobcats alongside fisher and gray foxes, researchers can learn if predation risk or overlapping habitat use with other carnivores may affect fisher survival and limit population recovery.
Results will help inform conservation strategies to support fisher persistence and guide future management actions in southwest Oregon.
ODFW is actively trapping bobcats through the end of March on non-maintained trails and roads in several areas of the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains. Entrance to most trapping areas are signed. Traps are non-lethal foot holds so biologists can collar and safely release bobcats.
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