Pennsylvania Game News - September 2020 - 39

other states; a pair even went to Germany.
A year later, a beaver trapping season
- March 1 to April 10 - was held; 6,455
beavers were taken. The agency closed
the season the following year to ensure
the beaver population could sustain a
season, which it did. And the season has
continued annually since, today drawing
about 2,500 to 3,500 beaver trappers, who
take 10,000 to 18,000 beavers.
While beavers had to be brought back,
not every furbearer that was stocked
had been in short supply. Raccoons, for
instance, were purchased for restocking
as early as 1926. They also were trapped
and transferred from northern counties
to southern counties, "where they were
sparse," according to the Oct. 24, 1940
Board of Game Commissioners meeting
minutes.
Other furbearer-restoration efforts
were tied to projects. Fishers had been
extirpated from Pennsylvania since
around the start of the 20th century. Otters
had maintained an isolated population in
the Poconos through the 1900s. Today,
both are firmly cemented in the Pennsylvania wilderness, their populations taking
hold after releases.
In 1982, 30 years after river otters first
were protected in the Commonwealth,
four otters were released on Kettle Creek
in northcentral Pennsylvania. Thirty-five
more were released on Pine and Loyalsock creeks over the next five years.
In 1990, otters were stocked for the
first time in northwestern Pennsylvania
when they were placed in the Allegheny
National Forest's Tionesta Creek. Two
years later, five otters were released in
southwestern Pennsylvania's Youghiogheny River. More stockings followed. The
Juniata River would receive the last otter

SEPTEMBER 2020	

release in 2002.
Today, otters are on every major river in
the state, and continue to follow tributaries into places otters haven't romped in a
long, long time. And since 2016, an otter
trapping season has been held in Wildlife
Management Units 3C and 3D. This
license year, it also will occur in WMUs
1A, 1B and 2F.
Meanwhile, fisher trapping is permitted in 16 of the state's 23 WMUs.
Fishers - 190 total - were released in
Penn's Woods from 1994 through 1998
through a collaborative effort involving
the Game Commission, the Department
of Conservation and Natural Resources
and Penn State University. Fishers also
dispersed into the Commonwealth from a
West Virginia population that started from
the release of 23 fishers in 1969.
Today, fishers are in more Pennsylvania counties than they aren't. A limited
fisher trapping season was started in
2010, and the number of WMUs where
the season is held has grown over time.
The fisher permit that's required to trap
them came 10 years after Pennsylvania
held its first bobcat hunting and trapping
seasons since the 1960s. Those seasons,
too, continue to expand opportunity into
additional WMUs.
Game Commission biologists have
learned as much about bobcats, fishers
and otters through trapper nontarget catch
reports as they have from dirt patterns and
roadkill reports. Their teamwork with
PTA and local trappers and fur-buyers
establishes a barometer that monitors
species abundance and range, information
that is critical in furbearer management.
A great example of how trappers and
biologists work together occurred in 1982,
when the Game Commission tried open-

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Pennsylvania Game News - September 2020

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