Patty Loew:
This week we begin with a growing mystery unraveling deep in Wisconsin's Northwoods. That mystery centers around an animal my nation, the Ojibwa, call “Waubeshay.” It’s a small but very fierce predator and the clan symbol for the warriors in the tribe. “In Wisconsin” reporter Jo Garrett shows you why the elusive pine marten is endangered and what is being done to save it in Ashland County.

Jo Garrett:
This is the story we've been following for many years.

Man:
Did they climb a tree, jump off a tree?

Jo Garrett:
A mystery.

Man:
They'll go in and out of the log.

Jo Garrett:
In the endangered species genre. A mystery to be solved by detective work.

Man:
We caught it over here. Now she’s off over this way.

Jo Garrett:
Through tracking and elegant traps.

Man:
Grass in there, and something for them to stay warm.

Jo Garrett:
And teamwork.

Man:
This is the infrared camera and that only works at night.

Jo Garrett:
The mystery centers on this animal, the pine marten, a tiny and tough predator. Weighing in at 1 to 4 pounds this member of the weasel family was always part of Wisconsin's Northwoods. The animal was driven from the state by fur trapping around the turn of the century. A recovery effort began in the early 1990s.

Man:
There we got her.

Jo Garrett:
Here is the mystery. Unlike other animals that have been reintroduced in the state, pine martens have not thrived. In fact, over the last decade their numbers have declined. Current numbers? Researchers estimate there are fewer than 200 in the Nicolet national forest and 30 to 100 in the Chequamegon. What's the story with Wisconsin's martens?

Man:
Minnesota has several thousand martens and Michigan has got several hundred. Not quite the same density but both are doing well and thriving. Yet we're stuck in the middle here and we have an endangered species.

Man:
I think she’s probably this way.

Jo Garrett:
Jonathan Gilbert is a wildlife biologist for GLIFWC, the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission and has studied martens for decades.

Jonathan Gilbert:
There are all kinds of fresh tracks here. She's been in here. This is where she's hunting and stuff.

Jo Garrett:
Armed with new, more precise information about exact specifics in habitat that martens prefer.

Jonathan Gilbert:
She’s telling me that she likes this spot a lot. That's an important thing. Now I've learned something from her. I've learned these stumps are important and those are useful places for them.

Jo Garrett:
Gilbert and GLIFWC and fellow researchers from the Wisconsin department of natural resources and the national forest service joined forces to start a new three-year recovery effort. Their goal, 30 martens like Tweak here, brought in from Minnesota every year for three years. For a total of 90 new martens in the state. So how is it going one year in? Gilbert gave us an update on the first year's twists and turns.

Jonathan Gilbert:
There isn't a manual out there that says how to introduce martens into Wisconsin.

Jo Garrett:
One very nice thing that happened in study year one involved this study subject. Meet Cherie.

Jonathan Gilbert:
We put some of these trail cameras that everybody’s familiar with now. We put it out on a maternal den site where a female had young.

Jo Garrett:
In a first for Wisconsin researchers, they caught this. Cherie emerges from the entry of her den at the base of a cedar tree. Look what she has.

Jonathan Gilbert:
We have pictures of the mother carrying the young out of the den site. So it was very cool and so we were able to actually document that reproduction was occurring.

Jo Garrett:
In addition they found another pocket of pine martens. The area used for the recovery project stretches for some 20 miles in the Chequamegon. That’s larger than the researcher's previous study area and happily it holds martens.

Jonathan Gilbert:
We found some martens down there that were native animals that had been living there all along. We didn't know about them. They occur over a wider area and there are probably more of them than we thought in the past. That's all good news.

Jo Garrett:
Understand, these woods are still way short on martens. A sustainable population is around 1,000 animals. They need 700 to 800 more. The work of these researchers trapping Minnesota martens is critical.

Jonathan Gilbert:
We wanted 20 females and 10 males.

Jo Garrett:
They almost got it. The first-year tally was 10 males and 16 females. Keeping to that nearly 2 to 1 sex ratio was no easy task. Gals like Tweak can be elusive.

Jonathan Gilbert:
It is a challenge to get more females than males. They're typically harder to catch. Males are more curious usually and perhaps more reckless. They tend to go into the traps easier. Especially young males. We're all used to those.

Jo Garrett:
Okay. You trap the animal, but then what? You are looking at one of the biggest changes in project protocol. That holding pen.

Jonathan Gilbert:
When we bring animals from one place and put them into another, there’s two ways you can release them. There is a hard release and a soft release. A hard release is, you go catch them, bring them over here, open the door to the container and let them go.

Jo Garrett:
The researchers wanted to keep these martens to the special pre-selected areas chock full of the kind of habitat that martens need to thrive.

Jonathan Gilbert:
So if they take off and run away, they may be running from good to poor habitat and we don't want that to happen.

Jo Garrett:
So, soft release. Hold them for a few days, get accustomed to the woods. And then just prop the door open and let the martens sneak out and settle in. Well, the martens had their own idea.

Jonathan Gilbert:
Once we let them go, well, they tended to wander anyhow. Furthest one was 20 miles, not meeting our objective of trying to hold them in the place.

Jo Garrett:
In addition, a few martens chipped their teeth trying to chew their way out of the holding pens.

Jonathan Gilbert:
It's the tip of the tooth would be broken off.

Jo Garrett:
Still unacceptable.

Jonathan Gilbert:
For a predator that's not a good thing. That's what they use and how they make their living.

Jo Garrett:
Their goal is to try to learn as much as they can about the species but still protect the individual animal. It's a constant trade-off.

Jonathan Gilbert:
Each animal has its own frequency on the collar.

Jo Garrett:
For example, without radio collars it isn't possible to track the animals. Without tracking there is no information on how the animals like Frank here are doing. But collaring has a down side.

Jonathan Gilbert:
It's more weight for them to carry when they're hunting or escaping predators. Animals that have to squeeze into tight places to hunt like martens do to get mice. That's a negative.

Jo Garrett:
To mitigate that negative, a trade-off. Before they started the project they agreed to collar only half the martens they brought in. One year in, they made another refinement.

Jonathan Gilbert:
We had an animal that was 450 grams. Put a collar on her and just looking at her it was like no, that's not good. We established a minimum weight below which we wouldn't collar the animals.

Jo Garrett:
The collars weigh around 30 grams.

Jonathan Gilbert:
Putting a 30 gram collar on a 400 gram animal is close to 10% of their body weight. That's too much.

Jo Garrett:
They still plan to collar half their martens but the marten must top 600 grams. Another refinement in the three-year project.

Jonathan Gilbert:
A great opportunity to work with such a cool species. I'm already thinking about the next steps. It's warm in there, huh? Yeah. You want to come out?

Jo Garrett:
I just talked to Jonathan Gilbert and he told me that they were able to trap 30 martens in Minnesota this year. That's 20 females and ten males released into the wild. They discovered by using the hard release that the martens actually stayed closer to the prime habitat selected by the researchers instead of running off. They don't know why. Just another marten mystery.

Patty Loew:
What about Cherie, the marten mom you photographed?

Jo Garrett:
Beautiful little Cherie is thriving and surviving and not only that, but we’ve got more photos of her and we hope to show you more of those.

Patty Loew:
Jo, I have really enjoyed your reports. Thank you so much. The report you just watched is the fourth in an ongoing series "In Wisconsin" has produced on the reintroduction of the pine marten. To watch related reports, just go to wpt.org and click on "In Wisconsin." You'll find out more about the pine martens' biology and what theories are emerging as to why the pine marten is not thriving here.