Critical habitat secured for Humboldt martens
Success follows years of foot dragging by the U.S F&WS
Earlier this week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to designate 572,000 hectares in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon as critical habitat for the Humboldt marten.
Securing this habitat, which is almost twice the size of Rhode Island, has been an effort by the Center for Biological Diversity and Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) for at least 11 years.
Historically, the Humboldt marten, a subspecies of the American marten, lived throughout coastal northwest California and southern Oregon, with the species’ southern boundary being demarcated by the Klamath River basin. Since 1995, surveys for the marten have found the creature only from southern Del Norte County and northern Humboldt County, the two most northerly coastal counties in California. This is less than five percent of the Humboldt Marten’s historic range.
Martens have long slender bodies, supported by short legs and followed by a big, bushy tail. They are sort of like miniature foxes and look like animals designed by Disney to be super cute. When I saw a picture of one, I wanted to take one home. That would probably be unwise, as they are pretty fierce creatures.
All American martens prefer to live in old-growth coniferous forests. For most folks, when they think of old-growth forests, they just think of big, old trees, but there is much more to it than that. Old-growth coniferous forests have complex ground covering and dense understories that might be missing from forests that have been logged since the 19th century. All this complex stuff around the forest floor gives the martens small environments that can shield them from harsh weather and hide them from predators.
The old-growth forest habitat is the problematic part for the martens. Before the 19th century, they had lots of it, undisturbed, throughout coastal northern California and southern Oregon. But during the the 19th century, logging of the Pacific Northwest commenced with a vengeance. Often, the land was logged and the wood was just burned. Author Michael Williams estimated that logging and just plain forest clearing in the United States destroyed 46 million hectares before 1850, and between 1850 and 1909 over 79 million hectares of forest were cleared.
This clearing had environmental costs, but Humboldt martens were still relatively common in the early 20th century. By 1937, however, biologists noted a decline in their numbers. By 1946, trapping of martens was outlawed in California. About 400 of the creatures now remain in fragmented and isolated habitats.
In 2010 the Center for Biological Diversity and EPIC petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the Humboldt marten as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Despite the low numbers of the species, the USF&W denied the Humboldt marten ESA protection in 2015.
In 2018, under pressure from the environmental groups, the agency proposed the protections but took no further actions, prompting the Center For Biological Diversity and EPIC to file suit once again, the results of that suit being this week’s habitat designation. The Center For Biological Diversity says that the federal agency has dragged its feet in listing the marten as Endangered because of pressure from the logging industry.
The diminutive creatures face another obstacle: pot. For decades aging hippies and other folks have flocked to the sparsely populated environs of the Pacific Northwest to live lives unencumbered by modern pressures. They also go there to grow pot. In Humboldt County alone, it is estimated that there are 4,000 to 15,000 pot farms on private property. That’s not including the thousands of plots where people illegally grow cannabis on public or tribal lands.
Not only are pot farms removing habitat from the martens, but a lot of the pot farmers use rat poison to keep rats and mice from disrupting their farms and food supplies. The rodents eat the poison; raptors and other carnivores (including martens) then eat the dead and dying rats and mice. This passes the poison, an anticoagulant, to the carnivore, which can then die of internal bleeding.
There is no word on what is to happen to all the pot farms in the designated habitat. (Center For Biological Diversity)
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Williams, Michael Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography (Studies in Environment and History) Cambridge University Press 1992 pp 211-215