Weasels on the increase

[Tom Rankin]

"Earlier this month, a fisher was photographed in the Bronx, the first spotting of this weasel-like animal in New York City in modern times. This is in keeping with a general trend: After being exterminated from much of their native habitat throughout the Northeast, they are slowly spreading back into their old stomping grounds and have increased their geographic range more than two-fold in the last century..."

Full Article:

http://www.popsci.com/article/scien...arger?src=related&con=outbrain&obref=obinsite

Fishers are being credited with the decline in the Porcupine population in the Catskills.

 

[Mike P.]

Fishers seem adaptable enough that if they lower the porcupine population, they may seek small pets as a substitute. (In Isle Royale, I believe, they used to have an issue with moose and wolves, too many wolves would decimate the moose population until the many wolves would die of hunger which would then mean more moose, and round & round)

If Fishers adapt to eat rats, their could be a fisher explosion if they are in NYC.

 

[sardog1]

When I was a kid in Minnesota, there was a bounty on wolves. The first one I saw was lying dead in a farmer's yard. Fishers were the stuff of legends, and I never met anyone who had seen one until I saw my first one about twenty-five years ago on the MN-ON border.

Fast forward to the new millennium. Wolves are on the edge of the Twin Cities. Fishers cruise my yard here in NH on a weekly (daily?) basis. Both species have amazed me with their ability to tolerate and even exploit the ways of humans, if they're just given enough of a chance.