[ percussive music ]
[ birdsongs and calls ]
[ acoustic guitar music ]
WOMAN: So the fisher is a pretty elusive carnivore.
You would not actually happen upon it in the forest if you're walking around.
They blend in really well with their surroundings.
There are definitely people that come to Yosemite from all across the world,
and they've never seen a species like this before.
WOMAN: It's very unlikely that you're going to see a fisher in Yosemite.
I've lived here for about 17 years
and I've never gotten to see a fisher.
There have been instances where I'm like, Oh, maybe that's a fisher.
But it turns out that it's probably more likely to be a marmot
or a marten.
TESSA: It's basically the same size as a house-cat,
and it's in the mustelid family, which is in the same family
as mink, otters and pine martens.
They can chase prey into trees and on the ground and through logs.
They're just very fast and very fierce animals.
SARAH: They have a very luxurious fur that's very thick and long,
and they were sought after by trappers for their pelts.
[somber, Western guitar music ]
TESSA: The fishers historical range actually spans
through the Sierras, up into the Cascades, and then across the boreal forest
of the United States and Canada over to the East Coast.
Because of logging, heavy logging and fur trapping,
they decimated the populations.
SARAH: Trapping was really common
through the late 1800s and early 1900s.
And then in 1946, trapping of fishers was banned in California.
But at that point, their population numbers were so low
that they still haven't recovered.
And now one of the biggest threats are these large scale wildfires,
particularly in this southern Sierra Nevada population
of which Yosemite is part of.
[ the descending scale of a canyon wren's song ]
The fisher in this area, in the southern Sierra Nevada
was listed as federally endangered in 2020 and that prompted the park
to want to learn more about this animal and how we can protect it.
And this study that we're working on right now, it's the first time
that Yosemite has tried to capture and collar fishers
and really look and see what they're using.
To find a fisher is pretty difficult.
They are not normally seen.
And so the best way is placing these remote cameras out.
First, just to see where these animals are on the landscape.
We place these out in areas where we think the fishers might be.
We've placed a piece of bait, usually like a raw chicken leg,
and it brings in things other than the fisher as well.
So we'll have bears visiting, bobcats, mountain lions.
We get a lot of different species on the cameras,
which is very exciting for us.
But when we get a fisher, which is kind of rare sometimes,
it's even more exciting.
[ Funky, uplifting jazz music with strong bass and drums ]
Once we have detected a fisher in a particular area, then we place traps there
and this was so that we could capture them and put collars on them so that later
we can track them to these specific habitat structures that they're using.
Once the fisher's captured and we've anesthetized it,
we usually place it down on the mat in order to work it up,
what we call processing the fisher.
This includes everything
from taking measurements of the body and the paws and the head.
We also put a collar on the fisher and this is to track it.
SARAH: So what it's doing is it's collecting locations
from satellites of where the fisher's been and then we can actually download
those locations from the collar remotely so we don't have to recapture the animal
to download the data.
[Uplifting, inspirational piano music ]
TESSA: We try our best to make sure that the animal isn't injured
or doesn't feel discomfort when it has a collar on
and that we're getting the data from it that we want.
And once it starts waking up, we monitor its situation before
we're going to release it.
We have it in a very safe, secure place in a box
to recover from the drug.
SARAH: It really is thrilling to see a fisher bound away
take that leap back into their home, wearing this collar, knowing that
we're going to get this incredible window into these animals lives.
So we can learn all of this detailed data about what the fisher needs
to survive, to reproduce, to forage,
really important information to know for conserving fisher habitat.
They're not just going anywhere.
They're actually using very specific parts
of the forest.
Yosemite is really important to Fishers
and Sequoia Kings Canyon National Parks
also provide critical habitat for fishers.
And there are areas in between on Forest Service land and private land
that also has really important fisher habitat, particularly because the linkages
and the corridors are absolutely critical to sustaining this population.
TESSA: Yosemite does provide quite
a bit of protection for the fisher species as well as countless others.
We are here to secure habitat for them and make sure that they have a place that
they can live and reproduce and survive
and interact with other species.
SARAH: Every animal is important to Yosemite.
The bears are important.
The deer are important,
but so are all those animals that we don't even see that escape our notice.
And fishers play an absolutely critical role to Yosemite.
They're wild, they're untamed, they're special.