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When the door of the wood box slid open, a hefty male fisher named Niffler poked his nose out. Then he took off, gliding like a cat across the damp, mossy earth and into the woods. Next, Niffler’s travel companions, Kendra, Neville, and Katie, were released, each undulating gracefully over fallen branches and logs. Their lush, thick, fur is obvious even as they zoom by at a run.
Fierce and lithe, these long-tailed carnivores are native to Canada and the United States, but fur trapping in the early 20th century caused their numbers to plummet. In Washington State, they were wiped out entirely.
Niffler, Kendra, Neville, and Katie—all named after characters from the Harry Potter universe—are the last fishers to be released into Washington State’s North Cascades National Park.
This fisher reintroduction, which began in Washington in 2008, is bigger than one species. It returns the original complement of mammal carnivores that existed before European colonization back to the state. This includes black bears, wolverines, and lynx, which managed to survived across the centuries; wolves, which began to return on...
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