Elusive, beady-eyed and adorable, the American marten, colloquially known as a pine marten, has a long, tumultuous history. After being practically wiped from Vermont’s landscape in the 1800s, reintroduced in the 1990s and disappearing again, these mammals now scurry among the Green Mountains, intriguing and puzzling researchers.
Martens are medium-sized carnivorous animals in the weasel family. In direct competition with fishers, they mostly snack on small mammals like red squirrels. But, if enticed by denser calories, they can take down something as large as a snowshoe hare, said Jill Kilborn, biologist for New Hampshire Fish and Game.
Native to Vermont and typically residing in high elevations, marten populations suffered when colonizers clear cut the old-growth forests that martens depended on for hunting. They were also major targets for trapping during the fur trade because of their coats, Kilborn said.
By the 1800s, the species was considered to be extirpated in Vermont and there was just a scattering of observations in the 1920s through the 1950s, said Bree Furfey, wildlife biologist and furbearer project leader at Vermont Fish & Wildlife.
The Endangered Species Act was legislated in 1973 and martens were listed as endangered in Vermont and New Hampshire, said Paul Hapeman, a specialist in small carnivore conservation at Central Connecticut State University.
Still, it wasn’t until the 1990s that the U.S. Forest Service and Vermont Fish & Wildlife made an effort to reintroduce the species to southern Vermont, relocating 115 martens from Maine and New York, according to Furfey.
The effort was a major one, but the follow-up was disappointing. Researchers couldn’t even detect them until the mid-2000s, when people started noticing hints of the sneaky creatures. Even then, the traces were scarce: a few pawprints in the snow, an offhand sighting.
The researchers finally confirmed a few sightings of martens in Green Mountain National Forest when three were caught in traps in the early 2010s, Furfey said.
That excitement prompted Fish & Wildlife to launch more robust research into the animals.
Now, a decade after those first sightings, researchers have determined two pools of marten populations, one in the Northeast Kingdom and another in the southern part of the state, Hapeman said. But they still have a lot of questions.
“Where did they come from? Were they left over and did we just not detect them after the reintroduction?” he said. “Or are these new marten that have come from somewhere else and have now made their way to the southern Green Mountains?”
Because Vermont is the southernmost region of marten territory, there’s a good chance the martens that reside in the north are from neighboring states or Canada. And in southern Vermont, there’s a good chance they came from the reintroduction 30 years ago. And sightings of the mammals in the middle area of the state remain a puzzle, he said.
His team is working to unravel the mystery by looking at the populations’ genetics, Hapeman said.
Depending on those results, that initial reintroduction effort could be a huge victory for conservationists.
“When you look at all the reintroductions of different species that have gone on in history in the United States, you’ll see that a lot of the fur bearers like marten and fisher are really way up there in the number of reintroductions that have taken place,” Hapeman said.
Further research is also important for determining the future of the hard-to-find mammals, whose biggest threats are habitat loss and climate change, Furfey said.
Because martens are in direct competition with fishers, their only advantage is their ability to burrow through snow. Fishers have much bigger bodies and carry more weight. With smaller feet, they suffer in deep snow conditions, whereas martens are built for snow, Kilborn said.
“As climate change happens and we lose our deep snowy winters, and have these winters with more ice and compacted snow, marten are gonna be the ultimate loser,” she said.
Martens also need unfragmented land for their population to survive. If the species’ males are able to move freely, they can breed with other marten populations and make it more robust, Furfey said.
In an effort to protect their habitats, Vermont Fish & Wildlife is working with private landowners to provide technical assistance on habitat conservation. It is an important consideration for timber management, particularly over 2,500 feet in elevation, Furfey said.