When most of us think of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, what comes to mind are elk, bears, deer, and moose. Now, a member of the weasel family is getting more attention.
The Bridger Mountains are home to all kinds of wildlife from bears and mountain goats -- even a small population of pine martens. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is working to boost that number this winter.
“The way that we're doing that is once again we're working with volunteer trappers who are collecting pine marten from the Paradise, the Gallatin the Madison and the Big Hole areas to bring them and to release them in the north half of the Bridger Mountains to augment whatever marten populations there are there already,” FWP spokesman Morgan Jacobsen explained.
This is a continuation of an effort started in 2020 in the Little Belts and continued in the Castles. The skill of these volunteer trappers makes the process fairly easy on these members of the weasel family.
“Once they do capture a marten in these areas, and in the case of the North Bridgers, we are — in most cases able to get them out there and release them within 24 hours of when they're caught,” Jacobsen said.
Pine martens have very little contact with humans. They are caught and checked for sex — with the hope to have at least 50% of those released be female — and then released into their new home.
“It steps on this floor plate here closes the door and then again there's space in this box where they can kind of have shelter,” Jacobsen said. “These trappers are checking [the] traps daily, and so it’s a very quick turnaround from the time the marten is in the trap to the time it's released.”
All of this takes place, essentially in that one box, “When we're ready to release it, we set the box down, we pull this off and the critter runs out,” Jacobsen told MTN.
Jacobsen also is asking anyone who sees pine marten in the Bridgers to let them know. Trail cameras are helping FWP monitor the martens and any sitings will only help that effort.
