Encounter with elusive fisher

It all happened so fast. I was traveling along a back road south of the Bradford Regional Airport, passing through a heavy section of woodland bordered by a large swamp, when a long, fairly skinny animal shot across the road about 60 feet in front of me.

In a blink of an eye it was gone. It was a large, weasel-like animal with a long tail. I immediately realized that I had encountered a fisher.

The fisher is perhaps Pennsylvania's greatest conservation success story. After the large-scale destruction of its forest habitat and unregulated hunting and trapping, fishers were extirpated from Pennsylvania during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

During the mid-1990s, the Game Commission in partnership with researchers from Frostburg State University and Penn State University reintroduced fisher populations into Pennsylvania.

Fishers have since thrived in the large tracts of Pennsylvania's second-growth forests and have spread to suitable habitat all throughout the state. An animal that was once eliminated from our forests now thrives.

From 1994-98, some 190 fishers were reintroduced into Pennsylvania, primarily at five sites throughout northern Pennsylvania. Fishers were reintroduced onto state game lands in Sullivan and Wyoming counties, Pine Creek Valley, Fish Dam Wild Area, Quehanna Wild Area, and the Allegheny National Forest.

They are about the size of a fox, have a dark brown coat, and are as comfortable climbing trees as they are roaming the forest floor. Fishers are one of the largest members of the weasel family; only badgers and wolverines are larger. They weigh 8 to 15 pounds and are 30-47 inches long.

Despite their name, fishers do not really catch fish. They will eat fish if they happen upon a dead one, but they prefer squirrels, mice, chipmunks, rabbits, porcupines and scavenging for carrion.

After the reintroduction program, people were seeing fishers near where I live in Cameron County, 20 miles north of the Quehanna reintroduction site. I always felt jealous as they shared the details of their experiences and had always hoped to cross paths with a fisher.

Fishers are solitary. They prefer large tracts of mature forest and live in rather low population densities. Fishers can have large home ranges, up to 30 square miles. For these reasons, they are not frequently encountered by humans.

Although my fisher encounter lasted no more than a few seconds, it is one I will never forget, special in both its rarity and in its conservation significance.

For the first time since 2006, we are experiencing a summer free of drought. Adequate rains and cool temperatures have maintained ideal fishing conditions in local trout streams.

It is sadly uncommon to find good trout fishing in July, but currently that is the case on our larger streams, such as the First Fork of the Sinnemahoning and the Driftwood Branch.

One can only hope that things continue like this throughout the rest of summer. But all it takes is a week or two of dry weather coupled with several 90-degree days to send trout into survival mode.

During 2006, stream conditions were ideal for trout fishing throughout summer. I had some memorable outings on the Driftwood Branch throughout June. Then in the days leading up to Independence Day, the sodium hydroxide spill put an end to trout fishing, or any fishing for that matter, on the Driftwood Branch.

Time has helped heal scars and the Driftwood Branch and its tributary of the Sinnemahoning Portage Creek are well on the way to full recovery.

During the past two weeks, Fish and Boat Commission crews have been electro surveying the streams affected by the Norfolk Southern chemical spill. It will be interesting to see the results, but I imagine that these fisheries are recovering quite nicely.