The Wildlife Conservation Department is offering this grant to investigate the impacts of wildfires and timber harvest on fisher and mesocarnivore populations in Northern California and Southern Oregon.

Additionally, understanding the limits to population growth and to recolonization is imperative for sensitive species that have been extirpated from previously occupied habitats. Once numerous in western forests, the distribution of fisher contracted over the last century due to harvest of fishers for fur and habitat changes associated with logging (Aubry and Houston 1992, Kucera et al. 1995). Current conservation and management practices have yet to see an increase in the population numbers and distribution of fishers in areas previously occupied aside from translocation efforts in California and Washington. One hypothesis for why fisher populations across most of their range in the Pacific Northwest have yet to expand into historically occupied habitats is that interspecific competition from other members of the carnivore guild may limit their presence and abundance. Furthermore, habitat change via natural (e.g., wildfire) and human caused disturbances (e.g., timber harvest and wildfire prevention activities) may affect the relationships within the carnivore guild. Thus, it is important to investigate the effects other members of the carnivore guild have on fishers in regions experiencing varying levels of timber harvest, habitat management, and ecological disturbances.