Fisher sightings in Northeast Ohio may be vanguard to species return to state

The high probability of a recent fisher sighting in Northeast Ohio may prove an indicators of the species’ natural recovery back into the region.

Several weeks ago a trail camera set up along the East Branch of the Chagrin River in Lake County captured the image of what’s believed to be a fisher. 

The trail camera was set up on private land near the massive Holden Arboretum, which is established in Lake County’s Kirtland City, Kirtland Hills Village, and Geauga County’s Chardon Township.

Due to the Arboretum and the area’s extensive large wooded home sites, the general area is much less developed than surrounding neighborhoods.

Perhaps not surprisingly it is also the same remote and rugged river corridor frequented by black bears – typically young males – being dispersed. This, following expulsion by their mothers from their haunts in northwest Pennsylvania.

And biologists with both the Ohio Division of Wildlife and the Pennsylvania Game Commission believe that fishers are experiencing the same expansive strategy.

Fishers were lost to Ohio sometime during the mid-1800s; the great extirpation period that saw wolves, black bears, elk and other species disappear from the state.

While the wild turkey, white-tailed deer, river and otters and others have returned either naturally or with human reintroduction efforts, some species are doing so at a much slower rate. Among them are black bears and fishers; a large member of the weasel family that can weight up to 13 pounds with males and up to six pounds with females.

Officially in Ohio, fishers are listed as both “extirpated” (meaning having disappeared from a particular part of their range) as well as a “species of special interest.”

By Ohio law, they cannot be trapped and if caught, they must be released.

Yet it appears back to Ohio the fishers will almost certainly come to stay, biologists are speculating.

“It does and it does not surprise me,” said Katie Dennison, the Wildlife Division’s fur-bearer biologist on the likely recent fisher sighting in Lake County.

To illustrate the infrequency of fisher sightings in Ohio, Dennison said since 2013 the Wildlife Division has confirmed only eight of them.

“But five of those have occurred within the past two years, including one sighting by our wildlife officer in Ashtabula County,” Dennison said.

In fact, of the eight sightings, one-half happened last year, with all but one occuring in Ashtabula County.

Which most certainly does not shock Dennison. Nor does it particularly startle Aaron Facka, Dennison’s counterpart with the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

“Ten years ago our fisher population was centered in the north-central part of the state, and around the Allegheny National Forest. Now they’re everywhere in Pennsylvania except for the urban areas of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh,” Facka said.

That expansion includes what the Game Commission designates as its Wildlife Management Unit 1B, consisting primarily of Pennsylvania's Crawford County, which is Ashtabula County’s nextdoor neighbor.

And while in 2019 about 700 fishers were recorded as being legally trapped in all of Pennsylvania, fully 150 of these animals were taken in Unit 1B, also said Facka.

“Expansion took off after 2004 but has slowed some since,” Facka said.

Both Facka and Dennison believe that what is happening in Northeast Ohio is that natural dispersal of young males striking out on their own and looking to stake a claim elsewhere.

Strong evidence of that belief is partly rooted in knowing that the two roadkill fishers collected since 2013 and examined by the Wildlife Division were both young males, Dennison said.

Both fur-bearer biologists say too that the habitat and available prey base – which includes squirrels, rabbits and birds besides porcupines which are vacant from Ohio – exists in sufficient quantities to attract dispersed fishers.

“If all you have are young males and the females are back in Pennsylvania, the males will go back there to mate but will return to where they were,” Facka also said.

Meaning, Northeast Ohio.

“I suspect you’ll see a breeding population sooner or later,” Facka said as well.

All of which excites Dennison, knowing that after a nearly 200-year absence Ohio might very well provide a homecoming for the shy and reclusive fisher.

“We are asking the public that if they do have a fisher sighting to report it to our wildohio.com web site,” Dennison said. “If we start to receive more reported sightings than we can do more research and possibly even conduct a reintroduction program.”

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net

JFrischk4@gmail.com