It was a crisp and frosty morning when Yegwúp the fisher was returned to his natural habitat.
One of three fisher kits orphaned in June this year Yegwúp, which means 'To Grow Strong,' has spent the last several months growing up in the B.C. Wildlife Park in Kamloops. Now able to hunt and fend for himself he was reintroduced to his environment last week and released back into the wilderness of the South Cariboo on Tuesday, Oct. 29.
With an audience of 20 humans watching, including members of the Recovering Fisher Population Project, representatives from the Williams Lake First Nation, Esk'etemc and the media, the fisher proved to be camera shy at first. However, after being left alone for a few minutes he soon ventured forth from his cage and began to explore his habitat, much to the delight of Thompson Rivers University Students and Recovering Fishers Population Project members Shannon Werden and Mae Frank.
"It feels really good, a really proud moment to see how he's progressed in hunting. It was a huge team effort, so many people involved from the get-go," Werden remarked. "It's kind of surreal that this happened. This whole story has been a miracle and I'm happy and a little bit anxious for him too. It seems like he really is set up for success and I'm excited for his future."
Werden was the one who originally discovered back in June that Gina, the mother of the three kits, had been killed, likely by a lynx. After confirming the kits were still alive and well in their den Werden, along with local biologist Larry Davis and members of the Esk’etemc Land Guardians, helped rescue them and take them to Kamloops for medical treatment and to be raised with minimal human contact.
Davis has been researching and monitoring fishers for the last 20 years in the Cariboo-Chilcotin and said in all that time he's never known a fisher to hang around the area it's released into. Typically they take off right into the woods, which made the chance to watch Yegwúp explore his new home all the more special.
"We were lucky enough to get some extra footage of that release. The male wandered around, sniffing and exploring his surroundings. We're hopeful that some carrion and road kill from the area will hold the male in his surroundings as he learns to catch wild prey," Davis said. "It was really a great experience. We were able to film and observe it doing what it does naturally. It was sniffing, digging and looking everywhere for prey species. That gives us hope this male will be able to survive, breed and become part of the fisher population in this area."
Francis Johnson was one of several members of the Esk’etemc people who attended the release and who helped name Yegwúp. A hereditary chief and the forest manager of Alkali Resource management, Johnson remarked he has been working closely with the Recovering Fishers Population Project, helping them set up trail cameras and learning more about their biology.
"I'm a forester and I find we need to learn about the animals that live on the land and the fish so I've decided to become a biologist as well," Johnson remarked, noting that he's working to combine Western knowledge of fishers with traditional knowledge from elders.
"We do a lot of disturbance on the land. We do some harvesting and we do have to follow rules for managing fisher and what kind of habitat they require. I think it's important we learn to enhance fisher habitat in the future."
As part of the acclimation process before being released Yegwúp and his sister, who has yet to be named, were kept in a cage shielded with pine branches to get used to their environment. Werden and Frank also tested their killer instinct by feeding them live prey including rabbits and squirrels. While Yegwúp was a "natural born killer" Frank joked, his sister proved to be a more gentle soul failing to kill a rabbit placed in her cage for over a day.
That's why Yegwúp was released on his own with his sister being kept for further monitoring until the team was confident she could and would hunt for her own food. They planned to release her by Friday, Nov. 1 if all went well, with Davis noting she is being released into her mother's territory which should still be unclaimed.
"The other two just need a little alone time as well to learn how to hunt and kill things, because they didn't have their mom around to teach them and usually they would have a couple of months with her," Frank said, with Werden noting the fall is typically when they would have left their mother to strike out on there own.
As for the third kit, he is still in Kamloops due to a congenital jaw defect. Unlike his siblings, he has a pronounced overbite and the team is unsure if he can hunt and kill prey on his own, with Yegwúp making most of the kills for his siblings while in captivity.
Davis said they plan to keep this fisher, whom he has nicknamed 'Wolfy', in Kamloops while they see how his siblings fare in the wild. If one dies Davis remarked Wolfy may become a permanent resident of the B.C. Wildlife Park and act as an ambassador for his species.
"We're going to play it by ear," Davis remarked. "I think there is good value in keeping him at the game park because most people have never seen a fisher in their life. Having an animal people could see and understand, especially with ecological context, that goes a long way in getting public opinion about fishers working for them."
Being part of this project has been deeply rewarding for Werden and Frank. Over the last several months they've been closely monitoring the health of the fisher population throughout the Southern Interior. Frank who specializes in studying the fishers' diet, was even able to get some scat dogs out to sniff out samples of fisher scat.
"Being able to collect so much data with them so quickly (was amazing). We got over 300 samples, which was incredible," Frank said.
Werden meanwhile has been studying fisher reproduction directly and how it's impacted by habitat. She noted that while these kits being released back into the wild is a happy ending, overall the fisher population is on the decline with only between 300 to 500 individuals in the Columbian population Yegwúp and his siblings belong to. This is due to a mix of habitat degradation, accidental killing in traps or by vehicles and a slow reproduction cycle with Werden observing fishers seem to have kits only every second year.
"We didn't know too much about weasels before this but now we're weasel people, we love weasels," Werden remarked. "My favourite part is following the females around during denning season and just monitoring how many kits they have and getting to know them kind of intimately. That's how this rescue happened because I was tracking them every day and knew where they were. It was a pretty insane couple of months but it was really fun."
Davis, Werden and Frank all hope by sharing the story of Yegwúp and his siblings they'll increase public awareness about fishers and the challenges they face. They also hope their research will help them learn what humans can do to help this species survive for generations to come.
"We want people to know what fishers are. They're an elusive species, pretty slinky and people generally have a negative view on weasels and we want to give weasels a new name because they're pretty impressive predators and essential in ecosystems," Werden said.
