An elusive critter called a fisher was spotted in an Ohio county for the first time since the 1800s.
In an Instagram post on Saturday, Cleveland Metroparks shared trail camera footage of a fisher that was captured earlier this year. The park system said the Ohio Division of Wildlife confirmed it’s the first fisher sighting in Cuyahoga County since the species was extirpated from the state more than a century ago.
Cleveland Metroparks said it’s estimated that fishers were extirpated, meaning they went extinct locally, in the mid-1800s because of unregulated harvest and loss of habitat.
In the post, Cleveland Metroparks wildlife ecologist Jonathon Cepek explains that since the first Ohio sighting in 2013, there have been at least 40 other observations in multiple counties, though this is the first verified sighting in Cuyahoga County and the park system.
“This is tremendously exciting, as this is yet another extirpated native Ohio mammal species to be documented for the first time in Cleveland Metroparks,” the Instagram post said. “The return of fishers and other extirpated species like otters, bobcats and trumpeter swans are a result of conservation efforts and emphasize the importance of our healthy forests, wetlands, waterways and natural areas in Cleveland Metroparks.”
The fisher has had a similar comeback in neighboring Pennsylvania. It’s believed the fisher disappeared sometime around the nineteenth century. Pennsylvania’s current-day fisher population is the result of natural expansion from other states in the 70s and reintroduction programs in the 90s.
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