1 00:00:19,920 --> 00:00:21,640 - Welcome everyone. 2 00:00:21,640 --> 00:00:23,610 Oh, it works great, fantastic. 3 00:00:23,610 --> 00:00:28,610 Okay, this is the final library outreach session 4 00:00:29,040 --> 00:00:32,290 for this academic year. 5 00:00:32,290 --> 00:00:36,770 So I am pleased to be introducing 6 00:00:38,320 --> 00:00:43,040 the scholar series presenter in a second. 7 00:00:43,040 --> 00:00:46,100 First of all, I want to ask everyone 8 00:00:46,100 --> 00:00:48,490 to please turn off your cell phones 9 00:00:48,490 --> 00:00:50,030 so we don't get a whole bunch of ringing 10 00:00:50,030 --> 00:00:52,890 during the middle of the session. 11 00:00:52,890 --> 00:00:57,890 And I guess since there's no other events to announce, 12 00:00:58,450 --> 00:00:59,700 I won't do that part, 13 00:00:59,700 --> 00:01:02,510 but know that we will have a full series of events 14 00:01:02,510 --> 00:01:05,320 starting again in fall. 15 00:01:05,320 --> 00:01:08,963 So let me get right to the business of the day. 16 00:01:16,341 --> 00:01:17,890 And what am I doing? Okay. 17 00:01:17,890 --> 00:01:19,940 Hold on a second. I need the actual name. 18 00:01:21,260 --> 00:01:25,300 The name of the talk is, the localized extinction 19 00:01:25,300 --> 00:01:28,910 and reintroduction of fisher populations 20 00:01:29,920 --> 00:01:31,953 by Dr. Andrew Rankin. 21 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:37,870 Andrew is a visiting professor of biology 22 00:01:37,870 --> 00:01:40,270 specializing in wildlife. 23 00:01:40,270 --> 00:01:42,670 Now this is where it gets even more interesting. 24 00:01:43,820 --> 00:01:47,940 He was born in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, a place I know well. 25 00:01:47,940 --> 00:01:49,483 I used to work in Rhinelander. 26 00:01:50,770 --> 00:01:54,140 He is a native born and bred 27 00:01:54,140 --> 00:01:57,670 in the great state of Wisconsin, go badgers. 28 00:01:57,670 --> 00:01:58,660 Okay. All right. 29 00:01:58,660 --> 00:02:02,890 So he received his PhD from the university of Idaho 30 00:02:04,160 --> 00:02:09,140 with a degree in bioinformatics. 31 00:02:09,140 --> 00:02:14,140 His master's from, we're still gonna like him despite this, 32 00:02:14,790 --> 00:02:18,160 from our rival Northern Michigan University. 33 00:02:18,160 --> 00:02:21,460 We actually like Northern, but it's fun to tease them, 34 00:02:21,460 --> 00:02:25,830 in biology and his undergrad from the fantastic 35 00:02:25,830 --> 00:02:29,910 University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in ecology. 36 00:02:29,910 --> 00:02:34,910 He has interests mostly in mammals, but this is interesting, 37 00:02:37,270 --> 00:02:41,343 also in geography, he's fascinated by maps. 38 00:02:43,520 --> 00:02:47,740 And he used to be in a band, multiple bands, 39 00:02:47,740 --> 00:02:50,833 but the one I really wanted to share with you, 40 00:02:52,607 --> 00:02:55,520 "Speed Danger Death." 41 00:02:55,520 --> 00:02:58,930 So you might want to talk to him about that after the talk. 42 00:02:58,930 --> 00:03:03,930 So anyways, join me in welcoming, Dr. Andrew Rankin. 43 00:03:09,710 --> 00:03:12,430 You got the name of your talk while I was doing that. 44 00:03:13,330 --> 00:03:15,393 - All right. Can everyone hear me? 45 00:03:15,393 --> 00:03:17,420 Is the microphone working? 46 00:03:17,420 --> 00:03:18,960 All right. 47 00:03:18,960 --> 00:03:20,920 It looks like most of the crowd is my students, 48 00:03:20,920 --> 00:03:22,210 so I'm a little less nervous 49 00:03:22,210 --> 00:03:25,170 'cause they're used to watching me make a fool of myself, 50 00:03:25,170 --> 00:03:26,520 one of everyone. 51 00:03:26,520 --> 00:03:29,240 All right. But thank you for everyone for coming out today. 52 00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:32,810 I'm excited to give this talk. It's about fishers. 53 00:03:32,810 --> 00:03:35,010 I'm first gonna talk a little bit 54 00:03:35,010 --> 00:03:37,330 about their natural history, some of their biology 55 00:03:37,330 --> 00:03:38,373 and natural history. 56 00:03:39,290 --> 00:03:42,740 And then I'm gonna talk a little bit about the fur trade 57 00:03:42,740 --> 00:03:45,570 and how that affected their population sizes 58 00:03:45,570 --> 00:03:49,680 as well as they were also affected by other things as well. 59 00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:52,270 And then I'm gonna talk a little bit about some projects 60 00:03:52,270 --> 00:03:55,763 that I worked on, on fishers when I was living out west. 61 00:03:56,610 --> 00:03:58,900 And then after that I have a couple slides 62 00:03:58,900 --> 00:04:02,693 about a couple other examples of animal populations 63 00:04:02,693 --> 00:04:05,143 that were reintroduced into other areas. 64 00:04:06,650 --> 00:04:08,000 I think we can get started. 65 00:04:09,040 --> 00:04:11,890 Let's see if these clickers work. Okay. 66 00:04:11,890 --> 00:04:15,010 So to begin things. So what are fishers? 67 00:04:15,010 --> 00:04:18,460 Fishers are the weasel family. 68 00:04:18,460 --> 00:04:21,790 So weasels, the scientific name for weasels is mustelidae. 69 00:04:21,790 --> 00:04:24,820 So I have it written right here, mustelidae. 70 00:04:24,820 --> 00:04:27,660 There's a whole bunch of different mustelids, 71 00:04:27,660 --> 00:04:29,110 and they're carnivores. 72 00:04:29,110 --> 00:04:31,200 So they're all mammals and they're all carnivores. 73 00:04:31,200 --> 00:04:35,330 And they all sort of have like a long tubular shaped bodies 74 00:04:35,330 --> 00:04:37,160 and they're usually short feet, 75 00:04:37,160 --> 00:04:39,780 are short legs and low to the ground. 76 00:04:39,780 --> 00:04:42,370 And so these are all we types of weasels. 77 00:04:42,370 --> 00:04:45,160 And so not only does it include fishers, 78 00:04:45,160 --> 00:04:47,830 but there's also the more familiar ferrets. 79 00:04:47,830 --> 00:04:51,120 So ferrets have been domesticated and there's also badgers, 80 00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:54,400 martens, minks, wolverines and otter. 81 00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:57,360 And so these are all animals that are in the weasel family 82 00:04:57,360 --> 00:04:59,423 and they're related to fishers. 83 00:05:01,930 --> 00:05:03,600 So like I mentioned, 84 00:05:03,600 --> 00:05:06,620 most fishers have this sort of elongated body 85 00:05:06,620 --> 00:05:08,460 in their short legs, low to the ground. 86 00:05:08,460 --> 00:05:09,720 They're also carnivores. 87 00:05:09,720 --> 00:05:13,470 They also have these enlarged canines as well. 88 00:05:13,470 --> 00:05:15,050 And so they're adapted to eating flesh, 89 00:05:15,050 --> 00:05:17,773 and so they're predators and they search for food. 90 00:05:20,170 --> 00:05:22,450 Moving on, lifestyle. 91 00:05:22,450 --> 00:05:24,850 So there's a few different types of lifestyles 92 00:05:24,850 --> 00:05:27,480 you see in the mustelidae family. 93 00:05:27,480 --> 00:05:30,870 So fishers and other animals like martens, 94 00:05:30,870 --> 00:05:32,520 which are very closely related to fishers, 95 00:05:32,520 --> 00:05:34,990 they're very good at climbing trees. 96 00:05:34,990 --> 00:05:39,880 And we call the animals like that, arboreals. 97 00:05:39,880 --> 00:05:41,251 So arboreals. 98 00:05:41,251 --> 00:05:43,800 So that means that they're really excellent tree climbers 99 00:05:43,800 --> 00:05:46,320 and they don't nest in the trees, 100 00:05:46,320 --> 00:05:48,453 but they do a lot of hunting in trees. 101 00:05:49,410 --> 00:05:51,020 Not all mustelids do that though. 102 00:05:51,020 --> 00:05:53,390 Some mustelids are primarily subterranean, 103 00:05:53,390 --> 00:05:55,620 so they're digging holes in the ground. 104 00:05:55,620 --> 00:05:57,940 They're familiar badger and then ferrets. 105 00:05:57,940 --> 00:06:00,370 So they're doing a lot of digging. 106 00:06:00,370 --> 00:06:02,610 And then there is a group of mustelids 107 00:06:02,610 --> 00:06:05,600 that are also semiaquatic and so those are the otters. 108 00:06:05,600 --> 00:06:09,260 And so there's both river otters and sea otters. 109 00:06:09,260 --> 00:06:11,110 And so just within the mustelidae family, 110 00:06:11,110 --> 00:06:14,083 we see this range of lifestyles, it's pretty interesting. 111 00:06:16,330 --> 00:06:18,270 So I mentioned that they're carnivores, 112 00:06:18,270 --> 00:06:22,520 and they're known to be very fierce predators. 113 00:06:22,520 --> 00:06:23,540 They're very aggressive. 114 00:06:23,540 --> 00:06:25,670 And they're actually known for attacking animals 115 00:06:25,670 --> 00:06:28,950 that are actually much larger than themselves. 116 00:06:28,950 --> 00:06:31,340 This is attacking some type of a waterfowl, 117 00:06:31,340 --> 00:06:33,690 are not good with bird species. 118 00:06:33,690 --> 00:06:36,630 This is a marten that's killed a rabbit 119 00:06:36,630 --> 00:06:38,530 and the rabbit is much larger than it. 120 00:06:41,750 --> 00:06:44,003 And they're so fierce in fact that, 121 00:06:44,990 --> 00:06:48,350 some fishers have been observed attacking other carnivores 122 00:06:50,990 --> 00:06:52,230 in a predatory fashion. 123 00:06:52,230 --> 00:06:55,670 And so here we have a fisher that's going after a fox. 124 00:06:55,670 --> 00:06:58,860 Fishers have also been observed attacking bobcats as well, 125 00:06:58,860 --> 00:07:02,400 and so they're sort of just this fearless animal. 126 00:07:02,400 --> 00:07:04,800 It's like, they don't know how small they are 127 00:07:04,800 --> 00:07:07,500 and they're sort of going after these other predators. 128 00:07:09,170 --> 00:07:12,100 The largest mustelidae is a wolverine. 129 00:07:12,100 --> 00:07:14,270 So even though Michigan is the wolverine state, 130 00:07:14,270 --> 00:07:15,820 I don't think there's any wolverines here. 131 00:07:15,820 --> 00:07:18,110 There may have been in the past, 132 00:07:18,110 --> 00:07:21,380 but wolverines are actually so fearless 133 00:07:21,380 --> 00:07:24,790 that they'll actually chase wolves away from a wolf kill. 134 00:07:24,790 --> 00:07:26,840 And a lot of times they're successful in that, 135 00:07:26,840 --> 00:07:29,260 even though the wolverines are usually smaller than wolf, 136 00:07:29,260 --> 00:07:31,570 they're able to scare the wolves off. 137 00:07:31,570 --> 00:07:32,403 And so these mustelids, 138 00:07:32,403 --> 00:07:35,193 they're very aggressive and they're predatory, 139 00:07:38,767 --> 00:07:41,410 and they're what we call cruise predators. 140 00:07:41,410 --> 00:07:45,460 And so usually predators fall under one of two categories. 141 00:07:45,460 --> 00:07:48,290 They are the cruise and they search around for prey 142 00:07:48,290 --> 00:07:52,310 or they'll sit and wait like an ambush predator like cats. 143 00:07:52,310 --> 00:07:56,290 So fishers are cruise predators, so they search around a lot 144 00:07:56,290 --> 00:07:59,130 and they're usually hunting by scent. 145 00:07:59,130 --> 00:08:01,190 And so they're crawling over everywhere, 146 00:08:01,190 --> 00:08:02,860 darting around in between trees 147 00:08:02,860 --> 00:08:05,590 trying to find things like rodent burrows. 148 00:08:05,590 --> 00:08:08,320 A lot of times they'll climb trees 149 00:08:08,320 --> 00:08:11,050 and they'll stick their heads into tree hollows 150 00:08:11,050 --> 00:08:12,700 to try to find like a nesting squirrel 151 00:08:12,700 --> 00:08:14,400 or something like that. 152 00:08:14,400 --> 00:08:17,093 They'll raid chicken coops and go after eggs. 153 00:08:19,010 --> 00:08:21,450 The first time I seen a fisher, 154 00:08:21,450 --> 00:08:23,230 I was hunting in Northern Wisconsin. 155 00:08:23,230 --> 00:08:26,320 I was in tree stand and I just seen this small animal 156 00:08:26,320 --> 00:08:28,950 just sort of darting around in a tree 157 00:08:28,950 --> 00:08:31,580 or in the darting around in between trees. 158 00:08:31,580 --> 00:08:33,630 They're very agile and they're very active, 159 00:08:33,630 --> 00:08:36,780 and so they're constantly just searching for food. 160 00:08:36,780 --> 00:08:39,470 And what they're doing is they're basically just looking in 161 00:08:39,470 --> 00:08:40,890 whatever crevice they can find. 162 00:08:40,890 --> 00:08:42,810 If they find a brush pile they'll search around, 163 00:08:42,810 --> 00:08:44,760 but they're basically looking for food. 164 00:08:47,860 --> 00:08:48,970 All right, continuing on. 165 00:08:48,970 --> 00:08:51,100 So I mentioned that fishers are arboreal 166 00:08:51,100 --> 00:08:54,040 and so they're very good at climbing trees. 167 00:08:54,040 --> 00:08:55,880 One of the reasons they're good at climbing trees 168 00:08:55,880 --> 00:08:59,320 is because their ankle joints are really mobile. 169 00:08:59,320 --> 00:09:01,860 You can see this fisher, it's hind leg, 170 00:09:01,860 --> 00:09:05,820 it's almost turned 180 degrees 171 00:09:05,820 --> 00:09:09,660 and notice that it's climbing down the tree head first. 172 00:09:09,660 --> 00:09:11,080 And so squirrels can do that, 173 00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:14,370 but not very many other mammals can do that. 174 00:09:14,370 --> 00:09:16,910 Some mustelids can climb down trees head first, 175 00:09:16,910 --> 00:09:18,280 but it's sort of unique. 176 00:09:18,280 --> 00:09:20,290 And part of the reason they're able to do that 177 00:09:20,290 --> 00:09:22,940 is 'cause their ankle joints are so mobile 178 00:09:22,940 --> 00:09:26,330 and this allows them to be an efficient predator in trees. 179 00:09:26,330 --> 00:09:29,380 And so they can go into trees and raid bird nest 180 00:09:29,380 --> 00:09:31,580 and look for squirrels and things like that. 181 00:09:34,690 --> 00:09:37,170 All right, and so most of the pictures you see, 182 00:09:37,170 --> 00:09:39,400 are of the fisher during the day, 183 00:09:39,400 --> 00:09:41,040 and so fisher are active during the day, 184 00:09:41,040 --> 00:09:43,630 but they sort of prefer the nighttime. 185 00:09:43,630 --> 00:09:46,680 And a lot of people don't see fishers normally 186 00:09:46,680 --> 00:09:48,760 and usually the reason is because 187 00:09:48,760 --> 00:09:51,060 they're active during the nighttime. 188 00:09:51,060 --> 00:09:53,320 And so one of the best ways to see fishers 189 00:09:53,320 --> 00:09:55,670 is to just use trail cameras. 190 00:09:55,670 --> 00:09:56,710 They're out there in the woods, 191 00:09:56,710 --> 00:09:58,890 it's just they're active during the nighttime, 192 00:09:58,890 --> 00:10:00,300 so we don't see them very often. 193 00:10:00,300 --> 00:10:03,250 And so one of the best ways to get a look at a fisher 194 00:10:03,250 --> 00:10:04,773 is using trail cameras. 195 00:10:05,720 --> 00:10:09,100 And for the study that I was a part of, 196 00:10:09,100 --> 00:10:11,250 trail cameras were a large part of our study 197 00:10:11,250 --> 00:10:12,223 that we performed. 198 00:10:14,270 --> 00:10:17,390 I wanna mention that fishers are, as far as I know, 199 00:10:17,390 --> 00:10:19,210 they're one of the only animals 200 00:10:19,210 --> 00:10:22,130 that actively hunts porcupines. 201 00:10:22,130 --> 00:10:24,180 And the reason they're able to do that 202 00:10:24,180 --> 00:10:26,590 is because fishers are very agile, 203 00:10:26,590 --> 00:10:29,733 and so they're sort of able to outmaneuver the porcupine. 204 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:33,430 The only parts of the porcupine that don't have quills on it 205 00:10:33,430 --> 00:10:36,510 are like the face and the paws and the stomach. 206 00:10:36,510 --> 00:10:39,260 And so when they're trying to attack a porcupine, 207 00:10:39,260 --> 00:10:41,720 they'll initially go after its face and 208 00:10:41,720 --> 00:10:43,010 if they can get it rolled over, 209 00:10:43,010 --> 00:10:44,500 then they can go after its stomach. 210 00:10:44,500 --> 00:10:46,520 But they're one of the only animals 211 00:10:46,520 --> 00:10:50,020 that can actually successfully take down a porcupine. 212 00:10:50,020 --> 00:10:52,340 And I bring this up now because 213 00:10:52,340 --> 00:10:55,783 this fact will come up again later in the talk. 214 00:10:59,200 --> 00:11:02,170 And so this is showing the range of the fisher. 215 00:11:02,170 --> 00:11:07,170 And so they live in the boreal forest of Canada. 216 00:11:09,020 --> 00:11:12,240 And so the boreal forest is just a 217 00:11:12,240 --> 00:11:13,680 mainly a carnivorous forest, 218 00:11:13,680 --> 00:11:16,540 so you mainly have evergreen trees there. 219 00:11:16,540 --> 00:11:19,910 And their range spans from the Atlantic Coast 220 00:11:19,910 --> 00:11:21,260 all the way to the Pacific Coast, 221 00:11:21,260 --> 00:11:25,230 but it's sort of in that boreal region, so a lot of Canada. 222 00:11:25,230 --> 00:11:28,400 But notice that they also come down into the northeast 223 00:11:28,400 --> 00:11:31,530 and then we also have fisher in Northern Wisconsin 224 00:11:31,530 --> 00:11:35,000 and Northern Michigan and as well as Northern Minnesota. 225 00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:38,140 And there's some isolated populations out west 226 00:11:38,140 --> 00:11:40,590 in the Northern Rockies, which is this part right here, 227 00:11:40,590 --> 00:11:42,823 and then the Sierra Nevada mountains there. 228 00:11:44,070 --> 00:11:46,670 The range actually used to go further south, 229 00:11:46,670 --> 00:11:51,570 but a lot of their southern distribution, 230 00:11:51,570 --> 00:11:54,003 they've been eliminated from those areas. 231 00:11:56,920 --> 00:11:57,800 And so I mentioned that 232 00:11:57,800 --> 00:11:59,897 they mainly live in the boreal forest 233 00:11:59,897 --> 00:12:04,897 and they tend to prefer to have a canopy above them. 234 00:12:05,190 --> 00:12:07,730 And so they're mainly living in old growth forest. 235 00:12:07,730 --> 00:12:09,560 And so you'll probably won't find a fisher 236 00:12:09,560 --> 00:12:11,850 in a new growth forest. 237 00:12:11,850 --> 00:12:14,920 And this is just showing you an old growth forest. 238 00:12:14,920 --> 00:12:18,920 This is, looks like lots of evergreen forest here. 239 00:12:18,920 --> 00:12:22,200 A lot of these trees are very tall, and so there's a canopy. 240 00:12:22,200 --> 00:12:27,140 One of the reasons why they do require an old growth forest 241 00:12:27,140 --> 00:12:28,810 is because when the females give birth, 242 00:12:28,810 --> 00:12:32,200 they actually will usually will find a den in a tree, 243 00:12:32,200 --> 00:12:33,850 like in the base of a tree. 244 00:12:33,850 --> 00:12:36,850 If you've ever seen a hollow in the base of a tree, 245 00:12:36,850 --> 00:12:40,230 females tend to prefer choosing those areas to give birth. 246 00:12:40,230 --> 00:12:42,590 And so that's part of the reason why we usually 247 00:12:42,590 --> 00:12:45,320 just find them in these boreal regions 248 00:12:45,320 --> 00:12:47,200 as well as they're pretty efficient hunters 249 00:12:47,200 --> 00:12:48,057 in trees as well. 250 00:12:48,057 --> 00:12:49,980 And so it's helpful to have trees around 251 00:12:49,980 --> 00:12:51,403 if you're hunting in trees. 252 00:12:55,385 --> 00:12:58,820 So fisher looking at their distribution, 253 00:12:58,820 --> 00:12:59,860 they're used to snow, 254 00:12:59,860 --> 00:13:02,520 they're living in snow half of the year. 255 00:13:02,520 --> 00:13:05,320 And so a lot of the times when you track fishers, 256 00:13:05,320 --> 00:13:07,420 you just track them during the winter time 257 00:13:08,480 --> 00:13:10,780 'cause you can follow the tracks in the snow. 258 00:13:10,780 --> 00:13:12,670 They usually have pretty large paws 259 00:13:12,670 --> 00:13:15,360 like other Northern animals do like lynx 260 00:13:15,360 --> 00:13:16,193 and things like that. 261 00:13:16,193 --> 00:13:17,410 They usually have large paws 262 00:13:17,410 --> 00:13:20,133 so that they can walk on top of the snow pack. 263 00:13:22,370 --> 00:13:27,370 So they mult their fur, and so they have a summer coat 264 00:13:27,500 --> 00:13:29,100 and then they also have a winter coat. 265 00:13:29,100 --> 00:13:32,710 And during the winter, their coat gets really thick 266 00:13:32,710 --> 00:13:37,710 and unfortunately for them humans like their thick fur, 267 00:13:38,610 --> 00:13:40,580 and so they ended up being, 268 00:13:40,580 --> 00:13:42,870 people would trap them for their furs, 269 00:13:42,870 --> 00:13:44,620 but they would only trap 'em during the winter time 270 00:13:44,620 --> 00:13:46,360 'cause that's when the fur was valuable, 271 00:13:46,360 --> 00:13:47,863 'cause much thicker. 272 00:13:49,654 --> 00:13:51,190 And so that brings us to the next slide. 273 00:13:51,190 --> 00:13:53,660 And so fishers were not only fishers, 274 00:13:53,660 --> 00:13:58,660 but most mustelids so like martens, stoats in Europe 275 00:13:59,070 --> 00:14:01,060 and wolverines and fishers, 276 00:14:01,060 --> 00:14:04,100 they're all sort of targeted for their coats. 277 00:14:04,100 --> 00:14:05,450 Like I mentioned, during the wintertime, 278 00:14:05,450 --> 00:14:07,270 they get a very thick coat 279 00:14:07,270 --> 00:14:12,270 and they'll make various fashion designs out of their fur. 280 00:14:13,780 --> 00:14:17,930 And this sort of plays into a lot of 281 00:14:17,930 --> 00:14:22,520 what we're talking today because part of the issue 282 00:14:22,520 --> 00:14:26,790 of the relationship between fishers and humans is that, 283 00:14:26,790 --> 00:14:29,520 they are trapped because there's an economical incentive 284 00:14:29,520 --> 00:14:32,420 to trap them because the fur is worth money. 285 00:14:32,420 --> 00:14:34,440 So the trappers will go and they'll trap them 286 00:14:34,440 --> 00:14:39,220 and they'll be able to be compensated monetarily for that. 287 00:14:39,220 --> 00:14:41,960 And so this puts a lot of incentive for people 288 00:14:41,960 --> 00:14:43,456 to actually go and trap them. 289 00:14:43,456 --> 00:14:46,640 And when it first started happening 290 00:14:46,640 --> 00:14:47,870 there weren't regulations. 291 00:14:47,870 --> 00:14:51,763 And so unregulated trapping can lead to some issues. 292 00:14:53,970 --> 00:14:56,280 This is just showing a map of the expansion 293 00:14:56,280 --> 00:15:00,130 into North America when fur trappers from Britain 294 00:15:00,130 --> 00:15:02,620 and France were first coming over 295 00:15:02,620 --> 00:15:04,740 and they're trapping mustelids, 296 00:15:04,740 --> 00:15:07,520 not only fishers but martens as well. 297 00:15:07,520 --> 00:15:10,920 And then sending the furs back to Europe 298 00:15:10,920 --> 00:15:12,900 to be put on the market. 299 00:15:12,900 --> 00:15:15,130 So initially, they made their way 300 00:15:15,130 --> 00:15:16,650 down the St. Lawrence Seaway 301 00:15:16,650 --> 00:15:18,040 and into the great lakes region, 302 00:15:18,040 --> 00:15:21,680 and they're doing a lot of trapping around here initially. 303 00:15:21,680 --> 00:15:22,560 As time went by, 304 00:15:22,560 --> 00:15:26,220 they eventually made their out west, 305 00:15:26,220 --> 00:15:29,590 and you can see that basically the entire area 306 00:15:29,590 --> 00:15:33,720 that they're trapping encompasses the fisher's range. 307 00:15:33,720 --> 00:15:35,350 Maybe not so much in the south here, 308 00:15:35,350 --> 00:15:37,680 but the majority of the fisher's range 309 00:15:37,680 --> 00:15:39,260 were basically in that the areas 310 00:15:39,260 --> 00:15:41,290 that were being heavily trapped. 311 00:15:41,290 --> 00:15:44,470 And this was basically all unregulated trapping. 312 00:15:44,470 --> 00:15:47,490 And so close to more than 100, 313 00:15:47,490 --> 00:15:51,163 maybe even 200 years of just unregulated trapping basically. 314 00:15:54,500 --> 00:15:58,670 And so this is showing a map, sort of comparing the fisher's 315 00:15:58,670 --> 00:16:00,760 historical range and there's two maps here, 316 00:16:00,760 --> 00:16:05,440 but the historical range compared to their current range. 317 00:16:05,440 --> 00:16:08,010 And so we can just look at this one right now. 318 00:16:08,010 --> 00:16:11,850 And so in the light brown, that's where they used to exist, 319 00:16:11,850 --> 00:16:13,050 but they're no longer there. 320 00:16:13,050 --> 00:16:16,090 And then the dark brown is where they still are currently, 321 00:16:16,090 --> 00:16:17,977 and they probably have been there for quite a long time. 322 00:16:17,977 --> 00:16:20,210 And so you can see they're pretty much lost 323 00:16:20,210 --> 00:16:23,120 from the great lakes region here. 324 00:16:23,120 --> 00:16:27,260 And actually before they started doing reintroductions, 325 00:16:27,260 --> 00:16:29,870 this map would've looked even sparser, 326 00:16:29,870 --> 00:16:32,690 they've subsequently reintroduced fishers 327 00:16:32,690 --> 00:16:33,960 to quite a lot of areas 328 00:16:33,960 --> 00:16:36,410 and sort of helped them rebound a little bit. 329 00:16:36,410 --> 00:16:40,090 But their current range is still only a percentage 330 00:16:40,090 --> 00:16:41,360 of their former range. 331 00:16:41,360 --> 00:16:43,460 They're sort of lost from the southern part 332 00:16:43,460 --> 00:16:45,580 of the great lakes region here. 333 00:16:45,580 --> 00:16:47,450 These two maps are just showing the same thing. 334 00:16:47,450 --> 00:16:50,640 I just thought it was helpful to put them two together, 335 00:16:50,640 --> 00:16:52,603 'cause they're a little bit different. 336 00:16:55,610 --> 00:16:57,990 So yeah, by about the 1930s 337 00:16:57,990 --> 00:16:59,470 is when they finally decided that, 338 00:16:59,470 --> 00:17:01,880 okay, we should probably stop trapping fisher 339 00:17:01,880 --> 00:17:03,960 because they're disappearing. 340 00:17:03,960 --> 00:17:06,360 And then after they put a regulation on trapping 341 00:17:06,360 --> 00:17:08,860 in the '30s, some reintroduction efforts 342 00:17:08,860 --> 00:17:12,683 started occurring in the '50s to various locations. 343 00:17:14,900 --> 00:17:18,730 Interestingly, one of the initial reasons 344 00:17:18,730 --> 00:17:21,160 why they were reintroducing fishers, 345 00:17:21,160 --> 00:17:23,660 it wasn't necessarily for the fishers themselves, 346 00:17:23,660 --> 00:17:26,270 it was because they noticed that 347 00:17:26,270 --> 00:17:28,090 after the fishers disappeared, 348 00:17:28,090 --> 00:17:30,830 the porcupine populations exploded. 349 00:17:30,830 --> 00:17:34,010 And porcupines can actually cause damage to trees, 350 00:17:34,010 --> 00:17:38,970 and porcupines will actually eat the bark of a tree 351 00:17:39,993 --> 00:17:41,750 and they're eating the part of the bark 352 00:17:41,750 --> 00:17:43,120 that has sugar in it. 353 00:17:43,120 --> 00:17:44,660 And my students know what that's called, 354 00:17:44,660 --> 00:17:45,797 is called the phloem. 355 00:17:46,665 --> 00:17:50,580 And not only are they eating the phloem of the bark, 356 00:17:50,580 --> 00:17:52,590 but they also, they have to sharpen their teeth. 357 00:17:52,590 --> 00:17:54,240 And so a lot of this is, 358 00:17:54,240 --> 00:17:56,440 the beavers are just sharpening their teeth. 359 00:17:58,090 --> 00:18:03,090 And if you have too many porcupines 360 00:18:03,350 --> 00:18:05,760 and there's no natural predators around, 361 00:18:05,760 --> 00:18:09,210 this is gonna cause damage to timber stands. 362 00:18:09,210 --> 00:18:11,870 And especially if there's a lot of young trees, 363 00:18:11,870 --> 00:18:15,140 the beavers will eat seedlings, 364 00:18:15,140 --> 00:18:16,900 they'll eat the buds off of the seedlings, 365 00:18:16,900 --> 00:18:20,390 and then the seedlings won't continue growing after that. 366 00:18:20,390 --> 00:18:24,283 And so after fisher populations were extricated, 367 00:18:25,140 --> 00:18:26,970 porcupine populations exploded 368 00:18:27,900 --> 00:18:30,440 and then they were sort of causing damage to timber crops 369 00:18:30,440 --> 00:18:32,360 and then logging companies didn't like that 370 00:18:32,360 --> 00:18:35,180 because the timber crops were being damaged. 371 00:18:35,180 --> 00:18:38,140 And so initially when fishers were first being reintroduced, 372 00:18:38,140 --> 00:18:40,890 it was because they were trying to control these 373 00:18:40,890 --> 00:18:43,513 porcupine populations which exploded. 374 00:18:46,220 --> 00:18:49,560 This is showing a map of all of the, or at least 375 00:18:49,560 --> 00:18:52,733 most of the reintroductions of fisher that have happened. 376 00:18:54,450 --> 00:18:57,000 A lot of them have actually been successful, 377 00:18:57,000 --> 00:18:58,770 some of them have been unsuccessful 378 00:18:58,770 --> 00:19:02,050 and then others they're still determining on 379 00:19:02,050 --> 00:19:03,503 if it's successful or not. 380 00:19:04,800 --> 00:19:07,370 So I believe the open white dots 381 00:19:07,370 --> 00:19:10,450 are areas where they're successfully reintroduced. 382 00:19:10,450 --> 00:19:14,027 And so you can see the reintroduction efforts in Wisconsin 383 00:19:14,027 --> 00:19:17,400 and the UP have mostly been successful. 384 00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:19,460 Fishers are relatively common again 385 00:19:19,460 --> 00:19:21,223 in the UP in Northern Wisconsin. 386 00:19:22,120 --> 00:19:23,580 Some of the reintroduction efforts 387 00:19:23,580 --> 00:19:26,480 in the Appalachian mountains have been successful as well. 388 00:19:27,520 --> 00:19:29,200 Where I was doing work out west, 389 00:19:29,200 --> 00:19:32,260 there's been some successful reintroductions 390 00:19:32,260 --> 00:19:33,300 in the white circles here, 391 00:19:33,300 --> 00:19:35,700 but there's also been some that have failed. 392 00:19:35,700 --> 00:19:38,500 So I believe the black squares are areas 393 00:19:38,500 --> 00:19:41,470 where the reintroductions have failed. 394 00:19:41,470 --> 00:19:44,950 And then I think the solid black dots, 395 00:19:44,950 --> 00:19:47,150 I think they're still waiting to determine 396 00:19:47,150 --> 00:19:49,063 if those had been successful or not. 397 00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:53,197 And so there's been quite a lot of reintroductions 398 00:19:53,197 --> 00:19:55,890 and these have been occurring since the 1960s. 399 00:19:55,890 --> 00:19:57,880 And so that's kind of why there have been so many 400 00:19:57,880 --> 00:19:59,670 because a lot of time has passed 401 00:19:59,670 --> 00:20:00,900 and they've been doing these 402 00:20:00,900 --> 00:20:03,543 and they're still continuing to do them as well. 403 00:20:07,090 --> 00:20:09,110 So this is showing a map of some of the areas 404 00:20:09,110 --> 00:20:12,820 that they reintroduced them in our area. 405 00:20:12,820 --> 00:20:14,250 And so they reintroduced them 406 00:20:14,250 --> 00:20:17,540 into a couple of the national forest in Northern Wisconsin. 407 00:20:17,540 --> 00:20:19,360 Those were the first ones and they actually, 408 00:20:19,360 --> 00:20:21,660 they trapped them in Northern Minnesota 409 00:20:21,660 --> 00:20:23,380 and then brought them over. 410 00:20:23,380 --> 00:20:25,157 And so this was happening in the late '50s 411 00:20:25,157 --> 00:20:28,290 and the early '60s in Northern Wisconsin. 412 00:20:28,290 --> 00:20:31,040 And then they also did have done some reintroduction efforts 413 00:20:31,040 --> 00:20:33,163 in Michigan's UP as well. 414 00:20:34,930 --> 00:20:37,950 And so the areas in the UP and so 415 00:20:37,950 --> 00:20:40,040 I believe the ones that were released 416 00:20:40,040 --> 00:20:41,540 in the Western part of the UP 417 00:20:41,540 --> 00:20:43,970 were in the Ottawa National Forest. 418 00:20:43,970 --> 00:20:46,830 And those were the initial ones in the '60s, 419 00:20:46,830 --> 00:20:48,300 and that has been successful, 420 00:20:48,300 --> 00:20:51,010 they've sort of been spreading out from there. 421 00:20:51,010 --> 00:20:53,040 And then they've also did some 422 00:20:53,040 --> 00:20:55,280 additional reintroduction efforts in the late '80s 423 00:20:55,280 --> 00:20:57,140 and the early '90s to the Eastern UP, 424 00:20:57,140 --> 00:20:59,650 so more closer to where we are. 425 00:20:59,650 --> 00:21:01,760 And as far as I know, those have been successful too. 426 00:21:01,760 --> 00:21:05,500 And I think fisher populations have increased enough 427 00:21:05,500 --> 00:21:07,210 that they actually do have 428 00:21:07,210 --> 00:21:09,590 an open trapping season on fishers 429 00:21:09,590 --> 00:21:12,253 again in the UP in Wisconsin. 430 00:21:13,130 --> 00:21:14,650 And so those reintroduction efforts 431 00:21:14,650 --> 00:21:16,783 have been successful relatively. 432 00:21:19,061 --> 00:21:20,710 So I'm gonna talk a little bit about the project 433 00:21:20,710 --> 00:21:22,170 that I was working on. 434 00:21:22,170 --> 00:21:25,360 So I did my PhD in Idaho, 435 00:21:25,360 --> 00:21:27,010 it's in the Northern part of Idaho 436 00:21:27,010 --> 00:21:29,113 and what's called the Panhandle. 437 00:21:30,670 --> 00:21:33,059 There's a couple populations of fisher 438 00:21:33,059 --> 00:21:34,580 that have been reintroduced there. 439 00:21:34,580 --> 00:21:37,270 And they all were originated from either 440 00:21:37,270 --> 00:21:40,010 Northern Wisconsin or Minnesota. 441 00:21:40,010 --> 00:21:43,060 And they would trap animals in these states, 442 00:21:43,060 --> 00:21:47,300 and then they flew them over to Idaho and released them. 443 00:21:47,300 --> 00:21:50,750 And this occurred in the late '80s and early '90s. 444 00:21:50,750 --> 00:21:53,510 And then the project that I was working on 445 00:21:53,510 --> 00:21:58,050 was kind of like a follow up survey to the reintroduction 446 00:21:58,050 --> 00:22:02,743 and the follow up survey occurred between 2014 and 2018. 447 00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:07,840 And just to give you an idea of how we did this. 448 00:22:07,840 --> 00:22:11,253 And so we didn't live trap the animals. 449 00:22:12,300 --> 00:22:16,150 We set up trail cams and bait stations. 450 00:22:16,150 --> 00:22:19,410 And then as the fisher would come 451 00:22:19,410 --> 00:22:22,020 and investigate the bait stations, 452 00:22:22,020 --> 00:22:24,800 we were able to hit set up what are called hair snares. 453 00:22:24,800 --> 00:22:29,290 And so we were able to steal some bits of hair off of them, 454 00:22:29,290 --> 00:22:31,070 and you're able to collect genetic samples 455 00:22:31,070 --> 00:22:33,130 from those hair samples. 456 00:22:33,130 --> 00:22:35,930 But anyway, essentially what we'd do 457 00:22:35,930 --> 00:22:38,990 is we'd find a couple trees that were next to each other, 458 00:22:38,990 --> 00:22:43,990 and then we'd either nail or tie a piece of bait to a tree. 459 00:22:44,490 --> 00:22:48,090 A lot of times it was a quarter of a deer. 460 00:22:48,090 --> 00:22:49,920 Sometimes there were frozen beavers. 461 00:22:49,920 --> 00:22:51,950 I don't know where the frozen beavers were coming from, 462 00:22:51,950 --> 00:22:55,100 but sometimes we just had frozen beavers 463 00:22:55,100 --> 00:22:57,220 that we had tied to a tree. 464 00:22:57,220 --> 00:22:59,150 And then adjacent to a tree, 465 00:22:59,150 --> 00:23:02,363 we'd have a trail cam to actually get some images. 466 00:23:03,790 --> 00:23:06,910 And then around the baits, 467 00:23:06,910 --> 00:23:09,820 we would put what are called hair snares. 468 00:23:09,820 --> 00:23:12,150 And so this is an example of what we'd call 469 00:23:12,150 --> 00:23:14,510 non-invasive sampling. 470 00:23:14,510 --> 00:23:18,320 And typically the type of data that I look at 471 00:23:18,320 --> 00:23:21,130 is genetic data, and so in order to collect genetic data, 472 00:23:21,130 --> 00:23:23,630 you have to get tissue samples 473 00:23:23,630 --> 00:23:26,890 and an alternative to actually killing the animal 474 00:23:26,890 --> 00:23:30,070 is to just do what's called non-invasive sampling. 475 00:23:30,070 --> 00:23:32,750 And so usually you can get tissue samples just from 476 00:23:32,750 --> 00:23:33,863 tufts of hair. 477 00:23:34,730 --> 00:23:36,440 The hair itself usually has what's called 478 00:23:36,440 --> 00:23:37,690 mitochondrial DNA in it, 479 00:23:37,690 --> 00:23:39,280 but sometimes there's skin cells 480 00:23:39,280 --> 00:23:40,850 that are attached to the base of the hair 481 00:23:40,850 --> 00:23:43,713 that you can get nuclear DNA from as well. 482 00:23:44,550 --> 00:23:49,550 On ours we would either set up barbed wire or screws, 483 00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:53,653 and then when the animals investigating the bait, 484 00:23:54,580 --> 00:23:56,557 their bodies are rubbing up against the barbed wire 485 00:23:56,557 --> 00:23:58,700 and the screw and a lot of the times 486 00:23:58,700 --> 00:24:02,170 it'll take a little tuft of hair off of them. 487 00:24:02,170 --> 00:24:04,510 And then we can come back and look at the photos 488 00:24:04,510 --> 00:24:07,000 and verify that what animal was there 489 00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:10,150 and then take the hair samples and then send to the lab 490 00:24:10,150 --> 00:24:12,350 and actually get genetic data. 491 00:24:12,350 --> 00:24:15,513 And so again, this is a type of non-invasive sampling. 492 00:24:17,810 --> 00:24:19,230 I'm just gonna go through our results. 493 00:24:19,230 --> 00:24:21,873 Our results were sort of interesting. 494 00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:24,520 And so this is the study area. 495 00:24:24,520 --> 00:24:28,200 So again, we are up in the Panhandle of Idaho 496 00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:30,700 and this is just blowing it up here. 497 00:24:30,700 --> 00:24:33,270 And so this is like the Idaho state line. 498 00:24:33,270 --> 00:24:35,800 So this is Montana and this is Washington, 499 00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:37,900 and to the north there's British Columbia. 500 00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:41,770 Notice that there's two different colors here, 501 00:24:41,770 --> 00:24:43,850 there's a dark gray and then a light gray. 502 00:24:43,850 --> 00:24:45,960 So the dark gray is showing elevation, 503 00:24:45,960 --> 00:24:47,893 and these are mountains out here. 504 00:24:48,770 --> 00:24:53,580 The light gray are valleys, and valleys are usually, 505 00:24:53,580 --> 00:24:57,160 there's usually lakes and usually human settlements 506 00:24:57,160 --> 00:25:00,060 are usually in the valleys and roads and things like that. 507 00:25:01,110 --> 00:25:02,910 So I have a couple different colors. 508 00:25:04,637 --> 00:25:07,030 The dots are where we actually 509 00:25:07,030 --> 00:25:08,410 were able to get samples from. 510 00:25:08,410 --> 00:25:10,930 So the dots represent sample locations. 511 00:25:10,930 --> 00:25:15,620 So like a fisher, we were able to bait a fisher 512 00:25:15,620 --> 00:25:18,410 at that point there, so I just put a dot there. 513 00:25:18,410 --> 00:25:21,080 I have a couple different colors too. 514 00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:23,030 I'll explain what they are in a second. 515 00:25:24,590 --> 00:25:27,210 And what I have circled here, 516 00:25:27,210 --> 00:25:28,477 those are the Cabinet Mountains. 517 00:25:28,477 --> 00:25:31,290 And so that's where the reintroduction happened. 518 00:25:31,290 --> 00:25:34,257 And so when they brought the fishers from Wisconsin 519 00:25:34,257 --> 00:25:36,637 and Minnesota, they dropped them off, 520 00:25:36,637 --> 00:25:39,193 and this mountain ranges, the Cabinet Mountains. 521 00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:43,900 Next to the Cabinet Mountains are a larger mountain range, 522 00:25:43,900 --> 00:25:46,210 These are called the Saint Joe Mountains, 523 00:25:46,210 --> 00:25:49,440 and there is actually a fisher population 524 00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:50,880 native to the Saint Joe Mountains 525 00:25:50,880 --> 00:25:54,780 that was already there before this reintroduction happened. 526 00:25:54,780 --> 00:25:59,070 And then there's another mountain range right to the side, 527 00:25:59,070 --> 00:26:01,453 these are called the Selkirk Mountains. 528 00:26:02,590 --> 00:26:06,640 And so again, the animals that were found 529 00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:11,640 in the Saint Joe Mountains, I have them colored green, 530 00:26:11,860 --> 00:26:16,560 and that was already a native population. 531 00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:18,680 Those animals were already there. 532 00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:21,300 And then in the late '80s and early '90s, 533 00:26:21,300 --> 00:26:24,860 they reintroduced a population to the Cabinet Mountains. 534 00:26:24,860 --> 00:26:29,480 And what we are interested in is, first of all, 535 00:26:29,480 --> 00:26:31,860 if the reintroduction was successful, like, 536 00:26:31,860 --> 00:26:34,700 are there still fishers in the Cabinet Mountains? 537 00:26:34,700 --> 00:26:37,040 And if there are, how many of them? 538 00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:38,680 And then we're also interested on 539 00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:40,500 if there's has been any gene flow 540 00:26:40,500 --> 00:26:41,750 between these mountain ranges, 541 00:26:41,750 --> 00:26:45,280 because we just want them to be in the Cabinet Mountains. 542 00:26:45,280 --> 00:26:46,750 We want them to sort of expand 543 00:26:46,750 --> 00:26:49,633 and integrate with the other native populations. 544 00:26:51,290 --> 00:26:53,710 And so our findings were sort of mixed. 545 00:26:53,710 --> 00:26:58,180 And so we did find a lot of fisher in the Cabinet Mountains. 546 00:26:58,180 --> 00:27:00,420 And we estimated that there's probably 547 00:27:00,420 --> 00:27:03,403 about 300 fisher in the mountain range currently. 548 00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:06,160 The initial reintroduction effort, 549 00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:09,580 I think brought a total of 110 fisher. 550 00:27:09,580 --> 00:27:11,450 And so initially in the early '90s, 551 00:27:11,450 --> 00:27:13,470 they dropped off 110 fisher. 552 00:27:13,470 --> 00:27:17,157 And about 15 years later, they're still there, 553 00:27:17,157 --> 00:27:18,930 and there's about 300 of them now. 554 00:27:18,930 --> 00:27:21,600 And so the introduction effort 555 00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:23,513 seems to have been successful. 556 00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:27,730 It established a population in the Cabinet Mountains, 557 00:27:27,730 --> 00:27:29,073 which is what they wanted. 558 00:27:30,310 --> 00:27:33,280 However, we found that there's virtually absolutely 559 00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:36,140 no gain flow happening between 560 00:27:36,140 --> 00:27:39,140 this reintroduced population in the native population 561 00:27:39,140 --> 00:27:41,040 that was in the Saint Joe Mountains. 562 00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:43,810 We didn't find any evidence gene flow 563 00:27:43,810 --> 00:27:44,887 between these populations. 564 00:27:44,887 --> 00:27:47,180 And that was sort of surprising 565 00:27:47,180 --> 00:27:49,840 because fishers are relatively mobile 566 00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:50,940 and they move around a lot. 567 00:27:50,940 --> 00:27:54,940 And so usually don't think of them as a kind of animal 568 00:27:54,940 --> 00:27:58,440 that's gonna be impeded by landscape effects, 569 00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:00,710 but there's something happening here where 570 00:28:00,710 --> 00:28:03,853 they're just not leaving the Cabinet Mountains. 571 00:28:04,790 --> 00:28:06,403 However, there is a caveat, 572 00:28:07,630 --> 00:28:09,823 if you see in the Selkirk Mountains, 573 00:28:10,950 --> 00:28:13,830 there was one individual that was detected 574 00:28:13,830 --> 00:28:15,830 in the Selkirk Mountains. 575 00:28:15,830 --> 00:28:17,110 And so just as a reminder, 576 00:28:17,110 --> 00:28:21,010 we did this study from 2014 to 2018. 577 00:28:21,010 --> 00:28:23,150 And so for those four years, 578 00:28:23,150 --> 00:28:27,760 they only found one fisher in the Selkirk Mountains. 579 00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,790 And we were able to determine genetically 580 00:28:30,790 --> 00:28:33,270 that it originated from the Cabinet Mountains. 581 00:28:33,270 --> 00:28:36,970 So it had Cabinet Mountain genetics. 582 00:28:36,970 --> 00:28:41,210 And not only was that the only animal that we found there, 583 00:28:41,210 --> 00:28:45,210 but we also captured it three on three different occasions. 584 00:28:45,210 --> 00:28:49,380 And so it seems to be a very lonely fisher there. 585 00:28:49,380 --> 00:28:52,960 And the first time we found it was in 2014, 586 00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:55,600 and then we detected it again in 2017, 587 00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:58,000 and then again in 2018. 588 00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:03,000 And where we found it in 2017 was 14 miles away 589 00:29:03,810 --> 00:29:07,030 from the 2014 observation. 590 00:29:07,030 --> 00:29:09,020 And so within that three year period, 591 00:29:09,020 --> 00:29:10,530 it had traveled 14 miles, 592 00:29:10,530 --> 00:29:13,760 which is pretty far for a little animal like that. 593 00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:18,330 But essentially, what our results are is that, 594 00:29:18,330 --> 00:29:20,570 the reintroduction effort into the Cabinet Mountains 595 00:29:20,570 --> 00:29:21,730 was successful. 596 00:29:21,730 --> 00:29:24,460 They've established a fisher population there, 597 00:29:24,460 --> 00:29:26,100 but for some reason, 598 00:29:26,100 --> 00:29:28,890 there's no gene flow occurring with the native population 599 00:29:28,890 --> 00:29:30,530 in the Saint Joe Mountains. 600 00:29:30,530 --> 00:29:32,390 So there's some type of landscape feature 601 00:29:32,390 --> 00:29:36,880 that's probably preventing them from moving freely. 602 00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:41,370 However, it doesn't seem to be a complete barrier, 603 00:29:41,370 --> 00:29:43,340 because there is at least one fisher 604 00:29:43,340 --> 00:29:44,700 that left the Cabinet Mountains, 605 00:29:44,700 --> 00:29:48,040 but it looks like he just went in the wrong direction. 606 00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:50,680 I kind of feel bad for this guy who's just, 607 00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,710 he's probably just a lonely fisher looking for some friends 608 00:29:53,710 --> 00:29:55,363 wandering around these mountains. 609 00:29:57,550 --> 00:30:01,240 And so it sort of brings up this importance point is that, 610 00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:04,200 landscape features can have a profound effect 611 00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:07,200 on gene flow across the landscape. 612 00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:10,210 And I did another study on fishers out west 613 00:30:10,210 --> 00:30:14,030 in British Columbia, and we've seen a similar thing, 614 00:30:14,030 --> 00:30:16,500 and so these fishers were not reintroduced. 615 00:30:16,500 --> 00:30:20,720 This has been an established population for a long time 616 00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:21,993 in British Columbia here. 617 00:30:22,860 --> 00:30:26,290 When we looked at samples that we collected, we found. 618 00:30:26,290 --> 00:30:28,560 And when we looked at the genetics, 619 00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:31,990 there was very clearly two different gene pools 620 00:30:31,990 --> 00:30:34,860 in the British Columbia fisher. 621 00:30:34,860 --> 00:30:38,560 And then when we plotted those two gene pools on the map, 622 00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:41,870 we noticed that one group of fisher 623 00:30:41,870 --> 00:30:44,010 was in the northeast here, 624 00:30:44,010 --> 00:30:47,440 and the other group was sort of in the central part. 625 00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:50,990 And the demarcation point between these two populations 626 00:30:50,990 --> 00:30:54,670 seemed to align pretty well with geographic feature, 627 00:30:54,670 --> 00:30:57,680 something called the Rocky mountain trench. 628 00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:00,410 This is an image from space, 629 00:31:00,410 --> 00:31:04,320 And so here's part of the Rocky mountain crest here. 630 00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:05,890 And if you look closely, 631 00:31:05,890 --> 00:31:08,980 you can kind of see a line traveling down. 632 00:31:08,980 --> 00:31:11,230 I have it highlighted right here. 633 00:31:11,230 --> 00:31:13,730 That's called the Rocky mountain trench. 634 00:31:13,730 --> 00:31:16,130 It's just a very steep valley 635 00:31:16,130 --> 00:31:17,930 and it's connected by two lakes. 636 00:31:17,930 --> 00:31:19,470 So there's Watson lake on the top 637 00:31:19,470 --> 00:31:22,370 and then Flathead lake down in Montana. 638 00:31:22,370 --> 00:31:24,730 And those two lakes are just sort of connected 639 00:31:24,730 --> 00:31:26,520 by this low elevation valley. 640 00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:28,903 Most of the valley is filled with water, 641 00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:32,390 but it looks like these in British Columbia, 642 00:31:32,390 --> 00:31:35,760 this is the main barrier to gene flow 643 00:31:35,760 --> 00:31:37,210 with fisher in British Columbia. 644 00:31:37,210 --> 00:31:39,940 So again, it's a landscape feature. 645 00:31:39,940 --> 00:31:41,930 In this case, it's a really steep valley 646 00:31:41,930 --> 00:31:46,160 and they're just having difficult time crossing this valley. 647 00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:48,510 And there's not a lot of gene flow 648 00:31:48,510 --> 00:31:49,407 that are occurring across it. 649 00:31:49,407 --> 00:31:52,090 And so this is another image from space, 650 00:31:52,090 --> 00:31:55,943 here's Calgary and Vancouver and the trenches right here. 651 00:31:57,020 --> 00:31:59,320 And so it looks like that landscape feature, 652 00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:02,580 that trench is sort of separating the two fisher populations 653 00:32:02,580 --> 00:32:05,260 in British Columbia. 654 00:32:05,260 --> 00:32:08,240 And so this is something that biologists, 655 00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:11,650 especially conservation biologists are interested in, 656 00:32:11,650 --> 00:32:16,650 because not only are they natural barriers to gene flow, 657 00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:19,150 but there's also artificial barriers to gene flow. 658 00:32:19,150 --> 00:32:22,610 So anytime you put a highway or something through a forest, 659 00:32:22,610 --> 00:32:26,533 that's creating a barrier for some animals probably. 660 00:32:27,790 --> 00:32:30,380 And so a lot of conservation biologists 661 00:32:30,380 --> 00:32:34,040 are interested in what are called wildlife corridors. 662 00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:37,430 Basically humans will construct corridors 663 00:32:37,430 --> 00:32:38,880 for animal populations 664 00:32:40,430 --> 00:32:43,163 so that populations can be connected over time. 665 00:32:44,134 --> 00:32:47,290 And this can either be with natural features 666 00:32:47,290 --> 00:32:48,610 or with artificial features. 667 00:32:48,610 --> 00:32:51,230 And so I have a couple examples here. 668 00:32:51,230 --> 00:32:56,230 So this is a farming landscape and at the edges of the farm, 669 00:32:56,830 --> 00:32:58,220 they'll have what are called, 670 00:32:58,220 --> 00:33:02,460 in Europe they call them hedgerows or hedgerows I mean. 671 00:33:02,460 --> 00:33:05,990 Basically you have these isolated patches of forest, 672 00:33:05,990 --> 00:33:07,580 but you still keep them connected 673 00:33:07,580 --> 00:33:10,110 by these thinner patches of forest. 674 00:33:10,110 --> 00:33:11,750 And then this is an interesting idea. 675 00:33:11,750 --> 00:33:16,330 And so this is a highway, and then above the highway, 676 00:33:16,330 --> 00:33:18,340 they have a pass, but it's just for animals, 677 00:33:18,340 --> 00:33:20,210 it's not for cars and you can see 678 00:33:20,210 --> 00:33:21,730 there's vegetation on that pass. 679 00:33:21,730 --> 00:33:24,260 And so that bridge is specifically for animal crossings, 680 00:33:24,260 --> 00:33:28,130 and I'm always curious to know how effective they are, 681 00:33:28,130 --> 00:33:31,750 but this is one thing that conservation biologists 682 00:33:31,750 --> 00:33:34,460 are interested in, are identifying 683 00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:38,690 landscape features like this, that impede gene flow, 684 00:33:38,690 --> 00:33:42,510 not only natural ones, but also artificial ones like roads, 685 00:33:42,510 --> 00:33:43,960 and then doing what we can do 686 00:33:44,931 --> 00:33:46,520 to try to help those populations, 687 00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:49,773 and usually that involves building corridors like this. 688 00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:55,860 So not only fishers have been reintroduced, 689 00:33:55,860 --> 00:33:57,380 but there's lots of other animals 690 00:33:57,380 --> 00:33:59,530 that have gone through these reintroduction 691 00:34:01,090 --> 00:34:04,050 in Michigan as well as Wisconsin. 692 00:34:04,050 --> 00:34:05,950 Elk have been reintroduced. 693 00:34:05,950 --> 00:34:07,540 So elk used to be, as far as I know, 694 00:34:07,540 --> 00:34:08,860 elk were pretty common 695 00:34:08,860 --> 00:34:10,910 in the eastern part of the United States. 696 00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:14,040 They're eventually driven out in, 697 00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:16,930 but populations in the west remain stable. 698 00:34:16,930 --> 00:34:19,820 And there have been quite a few elk populations 699 00:34:19,820 --> 00:34:20,810 that have been brought back 700 00:34:20,810 --> 00:34:22,860 to places like in Northern Wisconsin here, 701 00:34:22,860 --> 00:34:25,780 and I know there's one in Northern Michigan as well, 702 00:34:25,780 --> 00:34:28,140 as well as Pennsylvania and Kentucky. 703 00:34:28,140 --> 00:34:29,250 So it's not just fishers 704 00:34:29,250 --> 00:34:31,523 that are going through these reintroductions. 705 00:34:34,070 --> 00:34:35,600 I'm just gonna give another example. 706 00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:38,670 And what we've been talking about 707 00:34:38,670 --> 00:34:42,230 is these local extra patients where 708 00:34:43,440 --> 00:34:45,900 certain populations will go extinct, 709 00:34:45,900 --> 00:34:49,533 but a large part of the species range is still intact. 710 00:34:52,728 --> 00:34:54,070 Sometimes it's even worse than that. 711 00:34:54,070 --> 00:34:58,900 Sometimes a species will almost be completely wiped out 712 00:34:58,900 --> 00:35:02,520 to the point where there's only a single population left. 713 00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:05,324 And then at that point, what do you do at that point? 714 00:35:05,324 --> 00:35:07,720 You can't pull from a source population somewhere else 715 00:35:07,720 --> 00:35:09,150 and just, and reintroduce them. 716 00:35:09,150 --> 00:35:11,813 It's like, you have another problem that you're faced with. 717 00:35:13,390 --> 00:35:15,050 An example of that is with ferrets. 718 00:35:15,050 --> 00:35:16,813 And so ferrets, they're a relative fisher, 719 00:35:16,813 --> 00:35:18,613 they're a type of mustelid. 720 00:35:19,870 --> 00:35:23,270 I believe this is the species that have been domesticated. 721 00:35:23,270 --> 00:35:25,180 I'm not exactly sure. They're black footed ferrets. 722 00:35:25,180 --> 00:35:28,080 They're native to Western United States. 723 00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:29,690 This was their previous range. 724 00:35:29,690 --> 00:35:32,780 And so they're pretty common out west 725 00:35:32,780 --> 00:35:34,140 going all the way from Mexico, 726 00:35:34,140 --> 00:35:35,853 even to the Southern Canada there. 727 00:35:37,060 --> 00:35:40,090 Their main source of pray was prairie dogs 728 00:35:41,230 --> 00:35:44,580 and prairie dogs caused a burden to ranchers 729 00:35:44,580 --> 00:35:47,500 because the prairie dogs would dig up the ground 730 00:35:47,500 --> 00:35:48,740 and dig holes in the ground 731 00:35:48,740 --> 00:35:51,520 and it cause an annoyance for ranchers. 732 00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:56,010 And so there was a program to actually poison prairie dogs 733 00:35:56,010 --> 00:35:59,063 to kill off their populations by, I think they use poison. 734 00:36:00,060 --> 00:36:01,710 An unintended consequence, 735 00:36:01,710 --> 00:36:04,830 there's like every time you try to tinker with nature, 736 00:36:04,830 --> 00:36:07,550 there's always these unintended consequences, 737 00:36:07,550 --> 00:36:10,470 but one of the unintended consequences was because 738 00:36:10,470 --> 00:36:13,310 ferrets were primarily going after prairie dogs. 739 00:36:13,310 --> 00:36:14,970 After the prairie dogs were wiped out, 740 00:36:14,970 --> 00:36:17,970 the ferrets just basically disappeared. 741 00:36:17,970 --> 00:36:20,450 And this was a serious problem because 742 00:36:21,670 --> 00:36:24,040 they reduced them down to a single population. 743 00:36:24,040 --> 00:36:27,600 There was a single population left in Wyoming. 744 00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:30,210 So you think of an endangered species, right? 745 00:36:30,210 --> 00:36:31,520 This was a species that was just 746 00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:34,177 reduced to a single population and so this is '81. 747 00:36:35,556 --> 00:36:37,720 And what do you do at that point? 748 00:36:37,720 --> 00:36:40,357 You can't go to another population and grab animals 749 00:36:40,357 --> 00:36:42,603 and bring them in and reintroduce them. 750 00:36:44,250 --> 00:36:45,360 At this point, you have to go through, 751 00:36:45,360 --> 00:36:47,370 what's called a breeding program 752 00:36:47,370 --> 00:36:51,560 where you go out into the single population that's left 753 00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:53,190 and you trap some animals, 754 00:36:53,190 --> 00:36:56,020 and then you bring 'em into the lab or a zoo or whatever, 755 00:36:56,020 --> 00:36:59,560 and then you breed them to try to get more individuals 756 00:36:59,560 --> 00:37:03,530 and then release those bread individuals out 757 00:37:03,530 --> 00:37:06,810 into the natural populations and hopefully it's successful. 758 00:37:06,810 --> 00:37:07,920 In the case of the ferrets, 759 00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:10,370 it's looking like it's successful. 760 00:37:10,370 --> 00:37:11,883 I think it's still ongoing. 761 00:37:14,758 --> 00:37:15,760 So essentially what they did 762 00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:19,470 was they captured some of the fewer remaining populations 763 00:37:19,470 --> 00:37:21,510 that were left there in Wyoming, 764 00:37:21,510 --> 00:37:24,130 they brought them into the zoos or whatever, 765 00:37:24,130 --> 00:37:26,900 and started these breeding programs. 766 00:37:26,900 --> 00:37:28,220 And then throughout the '90s, 767 00:37:28,220 --> 00:37:31,670 they tried to reestablish some populations. 768 00:37:31,670 --> 00:37:34,210 And these populations that are in green, 769 00:37:34,210 --> 00:37:35,660 they're quite small still. 770 00:37:35,660 --> 00:37:38,900 And so this is still an ongoing effort, I believe, 771 00:37:38,900 --> 00:37:43,020 but this is just showing one of the populations 772 00:37:43,020 --> 00:37:46,300 that they've tried to have rebound. 773 00:37:46,300 --> 00:37:48,020 And so in the early '90s 774 00:37:48,020 --> 00:37:50,770 is when they started actually releasing the animals. 775 00:37:50,770 --> 00:37:54,090 And so it took them about 10 years to actually 776 00:37:54,090 --> 00:37:56,160 get to the point of reintroduction. 777 00:37:56,160 --> 00:37:59,090 And so they, oh, sorry. 778 00:37:59,090 --> 00:38:01,410 They captured the live animals in the early '80s, 779 00:38:01,410 --> 00:38:03,880 and then it took them about 10 years of breeding in the zoo 780 00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:06,240 or lateral or wherever they were. 781 00:38:06,240 --> 00:38:07,483 And then finally in the early '90s, 782 00:38:07,483 --> 00:38:12,010 they're actually ready to release some of the individuals 783 00:38:12,010 --> 00:38:14,710 and that's showing the black bars here. 784 00:38:14,710 --> 00:38:16,070 Those are the number of individuals 785 00:38:16,070 --> 00:38:18,910 that they released into the population. 786 00:38:18,910 --> 00:38:22,060 The blue number are the ones that are actually alive. 787 00:38:22,060 --> 00:38:24,060 And so you can see there weren't very many 788 00:38:24,060 --> 00:38:26,420 that were naturally in the population 789 00:38:26,420 --> 00:38:28,350 in the early '90s there. 790 00:38:28,350 --> 00:38:30,900 They released some, those are in the black bars 791 00:38:30,900 --> 00:38:34,230 and then eventually in the 2000s and throughout the 2000s, 792 00:38:34,230 --> 00:38:36,710 the population are increasing. 793 00:38:36,710 --> 00:38:39,413 And so it does look like the population is rebounding, 794 00:38:41,684 --> 00:38:44,040 and this is just one population. 795 00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:46,280 They're doing this in lots of different locations 796 00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:47,853 and hopefully it's successful. 797 00:38:50,430 --> 00:38:51,530 So this is my last slide. 798 00:38:51,530 --> 00:38:54,753 So just to give you an idea of how they do some of this. 799 00:38:56,845 --> 00:39:00,500 when you hear about trapping animals like in Minnesota, 800 00:39:00,500 --> 00:39:01,940 and then bringing them to Idaho, 801 00:39:01,940 --> 00:39:04,290 it's like, how do they actually transport them? 802 00:39:04,290 --> 00:39:07,660 And usually they just will go into the woods. 803 00:39:07,660 --> 00:39:10,480 This is an example with wolves, they live trap the wolves, 804 00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:14,150 and then they gave the wolves a free helicopter ride 805 00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:16,830 to a new location, 806 00:39:16,830 --> 00:39:20,070 it's like a free all expense paid vacation. 807 00:39:20,070 --> 00:39:23,740 So this is an example of wolves were actually wiped out 808 00:39:23,740 --> 00:39:25,473 in Yellowstone national park. 809 00:39:26,620 --> 00:39:28,330 And it caused again there, 810 00:39:28,330 --> 00:39:31,120 these unintended consequences when the wolves were wiped out 811 00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:32,710 the elk population exploded, 812 00:39:32,710 --> 00:39:36,010 and then the elks were eating all of the young trees 813 00:39:36,010 --> 00:39:38,440 and then it affected the tree population. 814 00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:42,050 So then they decided to bring wolves back. 815 00:39:42,050 --> 00:39:44,280 They trapped the wolves up in Canada, 816 00:39:44,280 --> 00:39:46,560 and then they put them on the helicopter 817 00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:49,280 and brought them down to Yellowstone and released them, 818 00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:50,747 I believe that was in the early '90s. 819 00:39:50,747 --> 00:39:54,573 And this has been another successful reintroduction. 820 00:39:56,310 --> 00:39:58,460 The wolf population there now is pretty stable 821 00:39:58,460 --> 00:40:01,823 and it's helping to control the elk population. 822 00:40:03,460 --> 00:40:04,990 All right. That is my last slide. 823 00:40:04,990 --> 00:40:07,240 And so I'd like to thank everyone again 824 00:40:07,240 --> 00:40:09,200 for coming out and listen to me. 825 00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:12,020 And I also like to thank my collaborators. 826 00:40:12,020 --> 00:40:14,460 And so I had a lot of help from the Idaho fish and game. 827 00:40:14,460 --> 00:40:16,300 And then there's also a program called 828 00:40:16,300 --> 00:40:18,360 the multi-species baseline initiative 829 00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:20,650 that I was working a part of. 830 00:40:20,650 --> 00:40:23,050 And so I just like to thank my collaborators 831 00:40:23,050 --> 00:40:26,880 and then I'd open the floor for comments and questions. 832 00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:30,000 - And if anyone has any questions, let me know, 833 00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:32,040 'cause I would like to bring over the microphone 834 00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:33,740 so that we can capture it 835 00:40:33,740 --> 00:40:35,823 so that you can be part of the recording. 836 00:40:37,720 --> 00:40:40,400 Is there one over there? Oh, there's two over there. 837 00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:42,920 And on the way over there, I'm going to ask, 838 00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:45,210 how long do fishers normally live? 839 00:40:45,210 --> 00:40:48,370 - Oh, like seven years around. 840 00:40:48,370 --> 00:40:51,560 It depends on if they're in captivity or in the wild, 841 00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:54,160 but I think in the wild it's about seven years. 842 00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:55,660 Yeah. 843 00:40:55,660 --> 00:40:58,470 - [Announcer] So what was the ideology 844 00:40:58,470 --> 00:41:02,520 behind bringing fishers from? 845 00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:04,810 I think you said they transported them from 846 00:41:04,810 --> 00:41:06,270 Minnesota and Wisconsin. 847 00:41:06,270 --> 00:41:07,620 - Yeah. - [Announcer] Into that 848 00:41:07,620 --> 00:41:09,630 population or like to introduce. 849 00:41:09,630 --> 00:41:11,420 - Why was it Minnesota and Wisconsin. 850 00:41:11,420 --> 00:41:13,780 - [Announcer] Yeah, and you were saying, 851 00:41:13,780 --> 00:41:17,210 there was already a population in mountains 852 00:41:17,210 --> 00:41:18,980 just adjacent to that. 853 00:41:18,980 --> 00:41:22,210 So why didn't they use that population 854 00:41:22,210 --> 00:41:24,480 that might have already been adapted to that habitat? 855 00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:26,500 - So, yeah, that's interesting. 856 00:41:26,500 --> 00:41:27,670 The native population, 857 00:41:27,670 --> 00:41:30,023 they were actually unaware that it was there. 858 00:41:31,930 --> 00:41:33,170 That part of... 859 00:41:35,996 --> 00:41:38,830 I just wanna bring my map up really quick. 860 00:41:38,830 --> 00:41:41,670 This part of Idaho is like extremely mountainous 861 00:41:41,670 --> 00:41:43,550 and there's not a lot of roads. 862 00:41:43,550 --> 00:41:46,150 And so people just don't go here a lot. 863 00:41:46,150 --> 00:41:48,150 They're called the Bitterroot Mountains. 864 00:41:48,150 --> 00:41:50,900 So they're very rugged and hard to get into. 865 00:41:50,900 --> 00:41:54,260 And so these populations of fisher, 866 00:41:54,260 --> 00:41:56,210 people literally didn't know they were there 867 00:41:56,210 --> 00:41:58,050 until I think there was another study 868 00:41:58,050 --> 00:42:01,480 in the early 2000s that discovered evidence 869 00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:02,920 that they were there. 870 00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:05,900 And a lot of it is just because there's just no roads 871 00:42:05,900 --> 00:42:09,260 in this area and people just don't go out there a lot. 872 00:42:09,260 --> 00:42:11,310 And so when they did reintroduce the fisher 873 00:42:11,310 --> 00:42:14,550 from Minnesota and Wisconsin in the early '90s, 874 00:42:14,550 --> 00:42:17,540 they literally just didn't even know about these yet. 875 00:42:17,540 --> 00:42:19,310 But then in like the early 2000s, 876 00:42:19,310 --> 00:42:21,320 there was another study on fishers 877 00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:23,053 that they had discovered in there. 878 00:42:24,290 --> 00:42:28,170 Actually one of the reasons why they did this reintroduction 879 00:42:28,170 --> 00:42:29,843 is actually because of trapping. 880 00:42:31,940 --> 00:42:33,510 The Idaho fish and game 881 00:42:33,510 --> 00:42:36,860 wants to open up a trapping season on fishers. 882 00:42:36,860 --> 00:42:38,430 And so that was one of the incentives 883 00:42:38,430 --> 00:42:41,000 to actually bring fishers here. 884 00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:43,710 And so the reason to bring fishers there 885 00:42:43,710 --> 00:42:46,280 is 'cause they wanted to open up a trapping season. 886 00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:49,540 And then again, they didn't know about these fishers 887 00:42:49,540 --> 00:42:53,230 because it's just in a very rugged terrain area. 888 00:42:53,230 --> 00:42:56,330 And a lot of people just don't go back there. 889 00:42:56,330 --> 00:42:57,293 Thanks though. 890 00:42:57,293 --> 00:42:58,543 - [Marc] Right. 891 00:42:59,770 --> 00:43:00,710 - [Narrator] Couple of questions. 892 00:43:00,710 --> 00:43:01,830 - Yeah. - [Narrator] I was curious 893 00:43:01,830 --> 00:43:04,840 like, do you know why in certain areas 894 00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:06,870 that you tried to relocate them, 895 00:43:06,870 --> 00:43:09,220 that those relocations didn't work? 896 00:43:09,220 --> 00:43:10,053 - Yeah. 897 00:43:10,053 --> 00:43:11,450 - [Narrator] And then other kind of going along with that, 898 00:43:11,450 --> 00:43:15,010 how do they pick what areas they want to relocate? 899 00:43:15,010 --> 00:43:16,680 'Cause I was noticing on your other map 900 00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:18,480 that some of them was really south, 901 00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:21,720 which almost looked beyond where they were. 902 00:43:21,720 --> 00:43:23,000 - Yeah. 903 00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:26,760 Yeah, I think there was one that was completely different 904 00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:28,990 or some of them are. 905 00:43:28,990 --> 00:43:30,840 Yeah. Some of them are further south. 906 00:43:31,850 --> 00:43:35,420 Some of it might be because they wanna open up a trapping 907 00:43:35,420 --> 00:43:38,193 season for them, and so they might introduce them. 908 00:43:39,290 --> 00:43:40,440 You had a couple questions though. 909 00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:45,440 One of them was, why do some of them fail? 910 00:43:45,740 --> 00:43:47,590 A lot of the reason is just because 911 00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:50,760 the animals that are reintroduced there, 912 00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:55,770 they just don't find each other in the wild. 913 00:43:55,770 --> 00:44:00,200 And a lot of the times 914 00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:02,520 they just don't bring enough animals to begin with. 915 00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:05,080 They might drop out 30 animals into a forest 916 00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:09,100 and hopefully they all find each other and breed. 917 00:44:09,100 --> 00:44:11,680 It doesn't always happen though. Right? 918 00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:15,310 If you just drop 30 animals in a forest, it's not guaranteed 919 00:44:15,310 --> 00:44:18,550 that they're gonna establish a population. 920 00:44:18,550 --> 00:44:20,470 Some of it could be to do to disease, 921 00:44:20,470 --> 00:44:22,150 some of them might... 922 00:44:22,150 --> 00:44:23,570 If there's only 30 individuals 923 00:44:23,570 --> 00:44:26,210 and a pandemic comes through it wouldn't be very hard 924 00:44:26,210 --> 00:44:28,500 just to wipe out all of them. 925 00:44:28,500 --> 00:44:30,010 Some of it might be because 926 00:44:30,010 --> 00:44:32,600 they're not used to whatever predators are there 927 00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:34,430 or like other predators they might have a hard time 928 00:44:34,430 --> 00:44:37,363 competing with the other predators that are around. 929 00:44:38,590 --> 00:44:42,920 A lot of it is just because the animals probably die 930 00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:47,380 before a gene pool can get established. 931 00:44:47,380 --> 00:44:49,530 They just have difficult time finding them. 932 00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:52,980 But as far as why they're introducing them 933 00:44:52,980 --> 00:44:54,140 into particular areas, 934 00:44:54,140 --> 00:44:57,360 some of it is to control porcupines like we mentioned. 935 00:44:57,360 --> 00:45:00,930 More of it is because people are interested in bringing 936 00:45:03,609 --> 00:45:05,640 more of a natural habitat back to the area 937 00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:08,550 to try to reestablish how things used to be. 938 00:45:08,550 --> 00:45:12,480 And then a lot of it is to just to start trapping again, 939 00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:13,713 which is kind of odd. 940 00:45:15,240 --> 00:45:17,023 Did I answer all of your question? 941 00:45:19,210 --> 00:45:22,230 - [Marc] In a battle between the porcupine 942 00:45:23,078 --> 00:45:26,590 and the fisher, does the porcupine ever win? 943 00:45:26,590 --> 00:45:30,109 - I'm sure there's times when the porcupine gets away, yeah. 944 00:45:30,109 --> 00:45:31,080 - [Marc] Okay. Good. 945 00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:33,920 And then on a somewhat related question, 946 00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:37,463 since you're kind of a specialist in this kind of animal, 947 00:45:40,030 --> 00:45:43,680 if a badger were to fight a wolverine, 948 00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:45,780 it sounds like what you said earlier, 949 00:45:45,780 --> 00:45:48,360 the wolverine might actually win, is that right? 950 00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:49,720 - I would guess the wolverine, 951 00:45:49,720 --> 00:45:52,110 I don't know how much they would come into contact though. 952 00:45:52,110 --> 00:45:55,820 Badgers are usually like a dry habitat animal 953 00:45:55,820 --> 00:45:58,900 and wolverines are usually in the snowy areas, 954 00:45:58,900 --> 00:46:01,760 but my bet would be on the wolverine. 955 00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:02,593 - [Marc] Okay. 956 00:46:02,593 --> 00:46:03,620 - Yeah. 957 00:46:03,620 --> 00:46:06,630 - [Marc] Oh, Allie's not here, I wanted to... 958 00:46:06,630 --> 00:46:08,963 oh, there she is, she's a wolverine and. 959 00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:10,673 - Oh. Yeah. 960 00:46:10,673 --> 00:46:11,506 - [Marc] There's some bad-- 961 00:46:11,506 --> 00:46:13,023 - We're all wolverines in Michigan. 962 00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:14,810 - [Marc] Yeah. 963 00:46:14,810 --> 00:46:15,643 Well, I don't know. 964 00:46:15,643 --> 00:46:18,140 There's some Spartans. We're all Lakers my friend. 965 00:46:18,140 --> 00:46:19,320 - Yes. - [Marc] But okay. 966 00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:23,520 Are there any other questions that you guys wanna ask? 967 00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:27,610 'Cause if not, I want to thank you very much 968 00:46:27,610 --> 00:46:29,490 for sharing this, this was very interesting. 969 00:46:29,490 --> 00:46:33,088 And maybe you'll stick around for some individual questions. 970 00:46:33,088 --> 00:46:33,921 - Yep. 971 00:46:33,921 --> 00:46:34,754 - [Marc] So, alright. 972 00:46:34,754 --> 00:46:35,587 Well, thank you very much. 973 00:46:35,587 --> 00:46:37,060 - [Narrator] We have a slide, a survey slide. 974 00:46:37,060 --> 00:46:39,170 - [Marc] Oh, and there's also a survey slide 975 00:46:39,170 --> 00:46:40,003 at the end. 976 00:46:40,003 --> 00:46:45,003 So if you'd be willing to fill out the survey, 977 00:46:45,210 --> 00:46:48,720 we do surveys for all of our library events. 978 00:46:48,720 --> 00:46:50,330 - What do they have to do to take the survey? 979 00:46:50,330 --> 00:46:51,163 Is this-- 980 00:46:51,163 --> 00:46:51,996 - [Marc] they need to... 981 00:46:51,996 --> 00:46:54,170 Apparently this generation understands 982 00:46:54,170 --> 00:46:58,010 what those things are, those QR codes, they scan 'em 983 00:46:58,010 --> 00:47:00,530 and it brings up a survey or something. 984 00:47:00,530 --> 00:47:02,510 - Sometimes I feel like the world has passed me. 985 00:47:02,510 --> 00:47:03,860 - [Marc] Yeah, me too. 986 00:47:03,860 --> 00:47:05,720 Yes. Okay. 987 00:47:05,720 --> 00:47:06,580 Well, thanks again. 988 00:47:06,580 --> 00:47:07,613 - Yeah. - [Marc] It was great.