Wildlife conservation often requires active management to support recovery of imperiled species. Species reintroductions can simultaneously engage diverse stakeholders while facilitating species recovery. Fishers (Pekania pennanti) are a carnivore of conservation concern historically distributed throughout hardwood-conifer and mixed-conifer forests of North America. Fisher populations declined due to unregulated fur harvest, forest loss, and poisoning during historical predator-control campaigns. Though fishers have recovered in portions of their historical distribution, fisher recovery in western North America has been limited. Indeed, fishers in the southern Sierra Nevada were listed as federally endangered in 2020 and fishers in northern California and southern Oregon are under listing consideration by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In Oregon, fishers occupy approximately 15% of their historical distribution. While fishers in Oregon are part of the largest extant fisher population in the Pacific states, they are physically and genetically isolated from other populations in Washington and California. Threats to their persistence, including wildfire, forest loss, and climate change, can drastically reduce the quality and extent of fisher habitat and increase risks of isolation and extirpation. To facilitate fisher recovery and persistence in Oregon, a reintroduction was determined to be both feasible and warranted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In this project, Sean will collaborate with federal, state, academic, and forest industry partners to incorporate fire refugia modeling into climate adaptation and recovery planning for fishers and develop an implementation plan to direct a reintroduction of fishers to the Oregon Cascades. An implementation plan will provide measurable and discrete steps to execute a successful reintroduction effort, facilitate the recovery of fishers, and ensure their persistence into the future.