EPIC is pleased to announce its association with
The Law Firm of Marten Fisher

Who's Marten Fisher? Why, they're sleek and savage - and severely imperiled by the rip-off of our old growth forests. And now we are their legal firm! The Marten might well be a partner in a law firm because she is a real weasel - and a cutie too. She weighs about two pounds and her boyfriend about three - definitely heavyweights from the point of view of Douglas Squirrels, one of their favorite dinner guests, along with flying squirrels, red-backed voles, and red tree voles.

They appear to consume few Peromyscus - the common deer mice - probably as a reflection of their abhorrence of open habitats in which those mice prosper. Martens are arboreal to a high degree, and can move from tree to tree through the canopy, providing there still is one. If not, they may have a dinner date with a Great Horned Owl or a Coyote.

We pray that the local Martens will miss their date with extinction. Although Martens range from Alaska to Newfoundland and south to New Mexico, in the coastal region of the Pacific States distributional losses have been major. Here ranged the subspecies caurina and humboldtensis. The latter form, the Humboldt Marten, ranged from Sonoma County in California northward slightly into southwestern Oregon. Until very recently it was believed to be extinct, but a very small population that is apparently this subspecies - probably fewer than ten individuals - has recently been rediscovered (the precise location is secret).

The Fish and Wildlife Service dropped coverage for the Humboldt Marten from Pacific Lumber's proposed HCP. We suspect they did this because their inclusion of it would amount to an admission that it is a valid taxon (named population) and that it still exists and something can be done to save it. We apologize if this sounds cynical, but alas Mammon appears to exercise greater (if also more covert) influence upon that agency than does truth.

The Humboldt subspecies of Marten differs sharply from the Sierran subspecies, both in pelage and tooth arrangement. The degree of difference from the more northward caurina is less well researched. But available evidence shows that coastal caurina is also in very big trouble and that the putative population of humboldtensis is unfortunately a highly discrete population segment - in other words, no matter which way someone might argue against listing these Martens they are legally listable under the federal Endangered Species Act and we are considering shepherding them through that process.

Okay, so the Fisher doesnt actually catch fish but it is bigger and meaner than the Marten, such that it might even kill and eat a Marten (solo practitioners may recognize this as the nature of some law partnerships other than Marten Fisher). The Fisher, also a real weasel, weighs in at five pounds (ladies) or ten pounds (gents). Not so cute as the Marten, this animal is the most effective predator of the Porcupine.

The Fisher prefers lower elevations than the Marten, probably because it is less able to survive heavy snows. The Marten enters the subnivean domain along diagonally leaning logs. Beneath the snow it hunts down rodents and sciurids. The Fisher will use dense second growth during summer for foraging (and yes, there are more Peromyscus in its diet) but come winter it retreats to the old growth where snow accumulations will be much less than in cut over areas. Both species require as natal dens structural features such as tree cavities which are primarily characteristic of old growth forests.

The Fisher is found at times in hardwoods, unlike the Marten. This may help account for the fact that while the coastal Martens are in terrible shape population wise, the Fisher has its best remaining natural population in all of the lower forty-eight states in northwestern California. Here the selective removal of conifers by the loggers (hardwood release) has significantly altered the makeup of the widespread Mixed Evergreen Forest.

Fishers from the Rockies to the Pacific are in big trouble, primarily through loss of old growth habitat. In the East and Midwest the Fishers are different - bigger, less adapted to being preyed upon, etc. They have responded well to being reintroduced to former haunts -- another distinction from western populations. We are studying whether these western populations will be another of our charges in the effort to make the Endangered Species Act real.

Apart from protecting these creatures, we also want to establish principles for preserving the essential forest structures on which these and other wildlife depend - large living trees, large snags, and large downed logs. And we are already assembling the legal team to do it: The Law Firm of Marten Fisher.

-- The man who walks in the woods